Lecturer | Executive Director, Center for Responsible Business
Center for Responsible Business | Sustainability
Leading expert on Nordic sustainable business and Nordic capitalism
About
Robert Strand is the Executive Director of the Center for Responsible Business and Lecturer at the Berkeley Haas School of Business. He is also Executive Director of the Nordic Center at UC Berkeley. His research and teaching compares U.S. and Nordic approaches to sustainable and socially responsible business. Strand teaches the suite of courses “Sustainable Capitalism in the Nordics?” at Haas that leverages his forthcoming book “Nordic Capitalism: Lessons for Realizing Sustainable Capitalism.” Read More
Prior to joining Haas, he was a professor with the Copenhagen Business School, and had previously spent a decade in industry with IBM and Boston Scientific in a range of roles in manufacturing, supply chain, marketing, strategy, and investor relations. He holds a PhD in corporate social responsibility from the Copenhagen Business School, an MBA in international business from the University of Minnesota, and a BS in industrial engineering from the University of Wisconsin. He was a United States Fulbright Scholar to Norway. With his spouse Sarah, he is the proud parent of two wonderful children, Jonas and Mikkel.
Expertise and Research Interests
- Nordic Sustainable Business
- Nordic Capitalism
- Corporate Social Responsibility
- Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
- Robert Strand. Global Sustainability Frontrunners: Lessons from the Nordics. California Management Review. 2024. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00081256241234709 (opens in a new tab)
- Robert Strand. A Nordic Perspective on Humanizing Business. Humanizing Business: What Humanities Can Say to Business. 2022. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-72204-3_42 (opens in a new tab)
- Marcel Bogers, Henry Chesbrough, Robert Strand. Sustainable open innovation to address a grand challenge: Lessons from Carlsberg and the Green Fiber Bottle. British Food Journal. 2020. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/bfj-07-2019-0534/full/html (opens in a new tab)
- Robert Strand and Dara O’Rourke. Patagonia: Driving Sustainable Innovation by Embracing Tensions (opens in a new tab). California Management Review.
2017 - Robert Strand, R. Edward Freeman, and Kai Hockerts. Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability in Scandinavia: An Overview (opens in a new tab). Journal of Business Ethics.
2014 - Mette Morsing, Robert Strand. CSR and Beyond. A Nordic Perspective (opens in a new tab). Corporate Communications: An International Journal.
2014 - Robert Strand and R Edward Freeman. Scandinavian Cooperative Advantage: The Theory and Practice of Stakeholder Engagement in Scandinavia (opens in a new tab). Journal of Business Ethics.
2013 - Robert Strand. Strategic Leadership of Corporate Sustainability (opens in a new tab). Journal of Business Ethics.
2014 - Robert Strand. The Chief Officer of Corporate Social Responsibility: a Study of Its Presence in Top Management Teams (opens in a new tab). Journal of Business Ethics.
2013 - Robert Strand. Toward Sustainable Sustainability Learning: Lessons from a U.S. MBA study abroad program to Scandinavia (opens in a new tab). Journal of Strategic Innovation and Sustainability.
2011 - Robert Strand. Corporate Responsibility in Scandinavian Supply Chains (opens in a new tab). Journal of Business Ethics.
2009
At Haas since 2014
2014 – present, Executive Director, Berkeley Haas Center for Responsible Business
2014 – present, Lecturer, Berkeley Haas
2012 – 2014, Assistant Professor of Leadership & Sustainability, Copenhagen Business School
2009 – 2012, Ph.D. Fellow, Copenhagen Business School
2006 – 2009, Principal Market Planner, Boston Scientific Corporation
2005 – 2006, U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Norway
2003 – 2005, Industrial Engineer, Boston Scientific Corporation
1999 – 2003, Industrial Engineer, IBM Corporation
Berkeley Haas Case of the Year Award 2019
for “Patagonia’s Path to Carbon Neutrality by 2025”
Berkeley Haas Case of the Year Award 2017
for “Patagonia: Driving Sustainable Innovation by Embracing Tensions”
Nykredit CSR Research Talent Award
2013
Society for Business Ethics Founders’ Award
2012
Next Generation Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) Scholar Award
2010
Bush Leadership Fellow & Award, Archibald Bush Foundation
2009-10
Society for Business Ethics Emerging Scholar Award
2008
Net Impact Distinguished Member Award
2008
U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Norway
2005-06
- Economy and Society: ESG-related opposition to Federal Reserve nominee (opens in a new tab), Ballotpedia News, 02/02/2022
- Responsible Business Education Awards: full shortlists (opens in a new tab), Financial Times, 01/18/2022
- Profit to purpose: Business schools find sustainability is hard to teach (opens in a new tab), Financial Times, 01/17/2022
- ‘You can’t really put the genie back’: As corporate America wakes up to its deep-rooted diversity struggles, top CEOs reveal how they’re rebuilding their companies around compassion (opens in a new tab), Markets Insider, 12/01/2021
- Nordic companies top the sustainability list (opens in a new tab), Nordea Invest (Danish), 07/25/2021
- Business schools wake up and smell the (ESG) coffee (opens in a new tab), Financial Times, 05/12/2021
- Corporate America’s response to restrictive voting laws in Georgia and Texas isn’t benevolence. It’s about economics and profit, experts say. (opens in a new tab), Business Insider, 04/09/2021
- Hail the Era of Activist CEOs – When Purpose and Platform Converge (opens in a new tab), Triple Pundit, 01/29/2021
- Covid-19 proves the Nordics have an edge in building silent societies (opens in a new tab), Nordic Business, 10/23/2020
- Coinbase’s rejection of corporate social responsibility creates a stir, but it shouldn’t be a shocker (opens in a new tab), San Francisco Business Times, 09/29/2020
- Companies Are Failing To Deliver On Stakeholder Capitalism (opens in a new tab), Business Because, 09/25/2020
- Post-Coronavirus: Sustainability-Focused Investment As The New Normal? (opens in a new tab), Forbes, 06/19/2020
- Coronavirus: How one small San Jose business came back from the brink (opens in a new tab), Mercury News, 05/15/2020
- US can learn from Nordic countries’ response to COVID-19, UC Berkeley experts say (opens in a new tab), Daily Californian, 05/11/2020
- Under pressure on all fronts to move beyond ‘profits at all costs’, business schools are making sustainability part of the core MBA curriculum (opens in a new tab), Find MBA, 04/27/2020
- Sustainable Business in the Nordics, XMBA296.5
- Sustainable Business in the Nordics, MBA 292C
- Sustainable Business in the Nordics, UGBA192T-1