Robert Strand is a Ph.D. Fellow affiliated with the Center for Corporate Social Responsibility (cbsCSR) and is co-financed by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). His Ph.D. project focuses on the role of leadership in corporate social responsibility (CSR), with a particular focus on CSR discussions and activities within the top management teams (TMT) in large companies (i.e. the “C-suite”). He is presently conducting a study in which he is reviewing the compositions of TMT’s in large companies from Scandinavia and the U.S. to identify companies that have appointed a member to the TMT with explicitly designated CSR responsibilities. In parallel, he has launched a participant observant study, drawing from engaged scholarship, to explore the discourse of CSR within the TMT.

Robert has a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Wisconsin (1999) and an MBA from the University of Minnesota (2005). He has a decade of experience in industry with IBM and Boston Scientific in manufacturing, supply chain, strategy, and investor relations roles and was a United States Fulbright Scholar to Norway (2005-06) during which time he explored CSR across Scandinavia. Robert is also a Lecturer at the University of Minnesota where he developed and leads the annual MBA course “Corporate Social Responsibility: A Scandinavian Approach” in which U.S. MBA students visit Norway, Sweden, and Denmark to meet with Scandinavian companies, NGO’s, governments, and universities- including the Copenhagen Business School. He served as the inaugural Net Impact Fellow to Europe (2009-10) and remains very active in the Net Impact organization working to connect Scandinavia with the United States via CSR. Robert was selected as an Archibald Bush Leadership Fellow by the Bush Foundation in Minnesota to help further his mission of connecting Scandinavia and the U.S. For more information about his work, Robert can be contacted at rs.ikl@cbs.dk.

- Strand, R. 2010. Culture & CSR: Embracing the Scandinavian Approach to CSR (Kultur og CSR: Fordelene ved den skandinaviske tilgang til CSR). In Børsen Ledelseshåndbøger Corporate Social Responsibility. April. pp. 1-14. Copenhagen, Denmark: Børsen Forum.

- Strand, R. 2009. Corporate Responsibility in Scandinavian Supply Chains, Journal of Business Ethics. Vol.85, pp. 179-185.

- Strand, R. 2008. The Stakeholder Dashboard. In C. Galea (ed.) Consulting for Business Sustainability. Sheffield, UK: Greenleaf Publishing.