Education: B.A., Duke University; Ph.D., Washington University
R. Edward Freeman is University Professor and Olsson Professor of Business Administration; Academic Director of the
Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics; and an Academic Director of the
Institute for Business in Society at the Darden School, University of Virginia. He is also Adjunct Professor of Stakeholder Management at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark, Visiting Professor at Nyenrode Business School (Netherlands), Adjunct Professor of Management at Monash University (Melbourne) and Visiting Professor at the International Center for Corporate Social Responsibility at Nottingham University. He has held honorary appointments as the Welling Professor at George Washington University and the Gourlay Professorship at University of Melbourne. Prior to coming to The Darden School Mr. Freeman taught at University of Minnesota and The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Freeman is the co-author of
Stakeholder Theory: The State of the Art(Cambridge, 2010) and
Managing for Stakeholders(Yale, 2007). He is the author or editor of over twenty volumes and one hundred articles in the areas of stakeholder management, business strategy and business ethics.
Freeman is perhaps best known for his award winning book:
Strategic Management:
A Stakeholder Approach
(Cambridge, 2010)
, originally published in 1984, where he traced the origins of the stakeholder idea to a number of others and suggested that businesses build their strategy around their relationships with key stakeholders. He was the editor of the Ruffin Series in Business Ethics (15 volumes) published by Oxford. He is the co-editor with Mette Morsing and Jeremy Moon of the Cambridge Series: Business, Society and Value Creation (11 volumes).
Freeman has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Washington University, and a B.A. in Mathematics and Philosophy from Duke University. He was recently awarded an honorary doctorates (DHC) in economics from Comillas University in Madrid, The Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki and an honorary doctorate in Management Science from Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands for his work on stakeholder theory and business ethics. Throughout his career he has received a number of teaching awards from the Wharton School, The Carlson School, the Darden School, the University of Virginia, the State of Virginia and the Academy of Management. He has received Lifetime Achievement Awards fromthe World Resources Institute and Aspen Institute, the Humboldt University Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility and the Society for Business Ethics. He has worked with many executives and companies around the world.
Freeman is a lifelong student of philosophy, martial arts and the blues. He is a co-principal in Red Goat Records, LLC found at
redgoatrecords.com.
Selected Publications
Freeman, R. Edward, L. Dunham, G. Fairchild, and B. Parmar. "Leveraging the Creative Arts in Business Ethics Teaching."
Journal of Business Ethics, forthcoming.
Freeman, R. Edward and Robert Strand. "Scandinavian Cooperative Advantage: Theory & Practice of Stakeholder Engagement in Scandinavia."
Journal of Business Ethics, forthcoming.
Freeman, R. Edward, J. Hoerisch, and S. Schaltegger. "Applying Stakeholder Theory in Sustainability Management."
Organizations and Environment, (2014).
Freeman, R. Edward and M.E. Haskins. "A Step-by-Step Process for Transforming Contentious Disagreements into Creative Collaboration."
Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 42(3), (2014), 15-22.
Auster, Ellen R. and
R. Edward Freeman. "Values and Poetic Organizations: Beyond Value Fit Toward Values Through Conversation."
Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 113.1, (2012), 39-49.
Freeman, R. Edward and Lauren Purnell. "Stakeholder Theory, Fact/Value Dichotomy & The Normative Core: How Wall Street Stops the Ethics Conversation."
Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 109(1), (2012), 109-116.
Selected Books
Freeman, R. Edward and Ellen Auster.
Bridging the Value Gap. San Francisco: Barrett-Koehler, 2015.
Freeman, R. Edward and Robert A. Phillips, ed.
Stakeholders. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010.
Freeman, R. Edward, J.S. Harrison, A.C. Wicks, B.L. Parmar
and S. de Colle.
Stakeholder Theory: The State of the Art. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Freeman, R. Edward.
Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach. Boston: Pitman (Harper and Row), 1984. Re-Issued by Cambridge University Press, 2010.
MBA Courses
Course Head, First Year Business Ethics
Leadership and Theater
Creative Capitalism
Business Projects
Executive Education Courses
True Leadership: Leading With Meaning
Global Strategy and Leadership
Online Courses
New Models of Business in Society
Advancing knowledge through research that shapes
business, Darden professors are recognized thought leaders in their fields. They
are not only master case method teachers, they also author many of the cases
used in Darden classrooms and around the world.
R. Edward Freeman's
cases are available in the Darden Business Publishing website.