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. His research and teaching compares U.S. and Nordic approaches to sustainable and socially responsible business. He has more recently turned attention to contrast varieties of capitalism in the U.S. and Nordic contexts and is currently working on the book project “Sustainable Vikings.” He was a United States Fulbright Scholar to Norway.
Prior to joining academia as a professor with the Copenhagen Business School, Strand 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 (completed at HEC-Paris), and a BS in industrial engineering from the University of Wisconsin. With his wife Sarah, he is the proud parent of two wonderful boys.
Expertise and Research Interests
- Nordic Sustainable Business
- Nordic Capitalism
- Corporate Social Responsibility
- Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
- Robert Strand and Dara O’Rourke. Patagonia: Driving Sustainable Innovation by Embracing Tensions. California Management Review.
2017 - Robert Strand, R. Edward Freeman, and Kai Hockerts. Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability in Scandinavia: An Overview. Journal of Business Ethics.
2014 - Mette Morsing, Robert Strand. CSR and Beyond. A Nordic Perspective. Corporate Communications: An International Journal.
2014 - Robert Strand and R Edward Freeman. Scandinavian Cooperative Advantage: The Theory and Practice of Stakeholder Engagement in Scandinavia. Journal of Business Ethics.
2013 - Robert Strand. Strategic Leadership of Corporate Sustainability. Journal of Business Ethics.
2014 - Robert Strand. The Chief Officer of Corporate Social Responsibility: a Study of Its Presence in Top Management Teams. Journal of Business Ethics.
2013 - Robert Strand. Toward Sustainable Sustainability Learning: Lessons from a U.S. MBA study abroad program to Scandinavia. Journal of Strategic Innovation and Sustainability.
2011 - Robert Strand. Exploring the Role of Leadership in Corporate Social Responsibility: A Review. Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics.
2011 - Robert Strand. Corporate Responsibility in Scandinavian Supply Chains. Journal of Business Ethics.
2009 - Robert Strand. The Stakeholder Dashboard. Greener Management International and The Journal of Corporate Environmental Strategy and Practice.
2008
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
- Business schools wake up and smell the (ESG) coffee, 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., Business Insider, 04/09/2021
- Hail the Era of Activist CEOs – When Purpose and Platform Converge, Triple Pundit, 01/29/2021
- Covid-19 proves the Nordics have an edge in building silent societies, Nordic Business, 10/23/2020
- Coinbase’s rejection of corporate social responsibility creates a stir, but it shouldn’t be a shocker, San Francisco Business Times, 09/29/2020
- Companies Are Failing To Deliver On Stakeholder Capitalism, Business Because, 09/25/2020
- Post-Coronavirus: Sustainability-Focused Investment As The New Normal?, Forbes, 06/19/2020
- Coronavirus: How one small San Jose business came back from the brink, Mercury News, 05/15/2020
- US can learn from Nordic countries’ response to COVID-19, UC Berkeley experts say, 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, Find MBA, 04/27/2020
- AI is coming. What does that mean for business education?, Poets & Quants, 10/23/2018
- Jeans giant adopts new operating model, Innovators Magazine, 02/27/2018
- MBA Application: 6 Of The Best US Business Schools For Social Impact, Business Because, 08/29/2017
- How CEOs Decided Trump Is a Bad Investment, Fortune, 08/16/2017
- How Businesses Can Profit with Purpose, San Francisco Chronicle, 06/28/2017
- Sustainable Business in the Nordics, XMBA296.5
- Sustainable Business in the Nordics, MBA 292C
- Sustainable Business in the Nordics, UGBA192T-1