Areas of Expertise (4)
Nordic Sustainable Business
Nordic Capitalism
Corporate Social Responsibility
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
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.
Multimedia
Publications:
Documents:
Audio:
Education (3)
Copenhagen Business School: PhD, Doctoral School of Organization & Management Studies
University of Minnesota: MBA, International Business
University of Wisconsin: BS, Industrial Engineering
Links (3)
Honors & Awards (9)
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
Positions Held (1)
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
Media Appearances (11)
Post-Coronavirus: Sustainability-Focused Investment As The New Normal?
Forbes online
2020-06-19
They reflect the Nordic philosophy that’s still in evidence today, says Robert Strand, executive director of the Center for Responsible Business at Haas School of Business at the University of California Berkeley.
Coronavirus: How one small San Jose business came back from the brink
Mercury News online
2020-05-15
In the past two weeks, about one-third of small companies in the U.S. have temporarily shut down and about one in five small businesses say they are two months or less away from closing permanently. But Lecturer Robert Strand, executive director of the Center for Responsible Business, believes the challenges brought by the crisis could foster solidarity.
US can learn from Nordic countries’ response to COVID-19, UC Berkeley experts say
Daily Californian online
2020-05-11
A group of academics, including Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School Laura Tyson and Lecturer Robert Strand, the executive director of the Center for Responsible Business, came together to discuss the response of Nordic countries to the pandemic. While all the countries differ, access to health care is likely to play a large role in economic recovery from the pandemic.
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 online
2020-04-27
Strand says that MBA students look deep into a companies’ ethos and strategy to ensure they are “walking the talk”. “If a company has a recycling initiative, that wouldn't qualify as a social initiative in the minds of our students,” he says.
AI is coming. What does that mean for business education?
Poets & Quants online
2018-10-23
Robert Strand, Executive Director of the Center for Responsible Business, warns students can be too focused on the undeniable power of machine learning, and not the risks. "My concern involves the unintended consequences of AI – the aspects that were not by design but nevertheless are an outcome in a world where AI is everywhere," he said.
Jeans giant adopts new operating model
Innovators Magazine online
2018-02-27
Robert Strand, executive director for the Berkeley-Haas Center for Responsible Business, added: “This is a significant win for the industry. It’s inspiring to see how LS&Co. used constraints to drive innovation, paving the way for a more sustainable apparel industry. This is an important step forward that I hope others will follow.”
MBA Application: 6 Of The Best US Business Schools For Social Impact
Business Because online
2017-08-29
Of the school’s commitment to addressing social and environmental challenges, Robert Strand, executive director of Haas’ Center for Responsible Business said: “We live and breathe social impact at Berkeley. Berkeley-Haas is a pioneer innovating social impact solutions, from our longstanding Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) to our expansive curricular opportunities, which include our Social Lean Launchpad course and our hosting of the annual Patagonia Case Competition.”
How CEOs Decided Trump Is a Bad Investment
Fortune online
2017-08-16
CEOs have been rapidly fleeing President Trump’s business councils. The CEOs of Merck, Intel, Under Armour (UAA, +1.46%)—and now 3M (MMM, +0.88%) and Campell’s Soup (CPB, -0.59%)—are all gone. I just got up to get a cup of coffee. Did I miss anything? Oh, the president disbanded the business councils altogether. Hold on—another update: United Technologies (UTX, +1.72%) CEO Greg Hayes just resigned from the council. Sorry Greg, you’ve got to move a lot faster than that to stay ahead of the perpetual turmoil that is Donald Trump.
How Businesses Can Profit with Purpose
San Francisco Chronicle online
2017-06-28
How do you motivate someone to work?
Who’s In Charge of Sustainability at Your Favorite Brand?
Racked online
2016-11-23
Robert Strand, the executive director of the Center for Responsible Business at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, studies the emergence of CSOs and says that it can be difficult to pin down who fills that role at different companies because it might be designated by a host of related terms, like "corporate social responsibility" or "corporate citizenship." Case in point: Nike first created a VP of Corporate Responsibility position in 1998, before renaming it a few times and ultimately landing on Chief Sustainability Officer in 2014.
Scandinavia can be an inspiration for creating shared value
Financial Times online
2014-04-25
Michael Porter, renowned management strategist and author of the influential Competitive Strategy (1980) and Competitive Advantage (1985), has recently performed a dramatic shift toward encouraging co-operation with the article Creating Shared Value. This shift is welcomed given that sustainability challenges are too big and urgent for any single actor to effectively address alone. Redirecting focus on co-operation, however, will demand concerted effort given Porter’s past success at embedding an almost rote allegiance to “competitive advantage” in the minds of business people. Scandinavian business can provide inspiration.
Selected Papers & Publications (10)
Patagonia: Driving Sustainable Innovation by Embracing Tensions
California Management ReviewRobert Strand and Dara O’Rourke
2017
Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability in Scandinavia: An Overview
Journal of Business EthicsRobert Strand, R. Edward Freeman, and Kai Hockerts
2014
CSR and Beyond. A Nordic Perspective
Corporate Communications: An International JournalMette Morsing, Robert Strand
2014
Scandinavian Cooperative Advantage: The Theory and Practice of Stakeholder Engagement in Scandinavia
Journal of Business EthicsRobert Strand and R Edward Freeman
2013
Strategic Leadership of Corporate Sustainability
Journal of Business EthicsRobert Strand
2014
The Chief Officer of Corporate Social Responsibility: a Study of Its Presence in Top Management Teams
Journal of Business EthicsRobert Strand
2013
Toward Sustainable Sustainability Learning: Lessons from a U.S. MBA study abroad program to Scandinavia
Journal of Strategic Innovation and SustainabilityRobert Strand
2011
Exploring the Role of Leadership in Corporate Social Responsibility: A Review
Journal of Leadership, Accountability and EthicsRobert Strand
2011
Corporate Responsibility in Scandinavian Supply Chains
Journal of Business EthicsRobert Strand
2009
The Stakeholder Dashboard
Greener Management International and The Journal of Corporate Environmental Strategy and PracticeRobert Strand
2008
Teaching (3)
Sustainable Business in the Nordics
XMBA296.5
Sustainable Business in the Nordics
MBA 292C
Sustainable Business in the Nordics
UGBA192T-1
Social