Harry Van Buren

Harry Van Buren is the Barbara and David A. Koch Endowed Chair of Business Ethics at the University of St. Thomas’ Opus College of Business. Before coming to St. Thomas, he served on the faculties of the University of New Mexico and the American University of Beirut.

Harry became interested in business ethics while in seminary. A 1994 summer field placement at the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, which focused on bringing community leaders and bankers from South Africa after the country’s first truly election to observe how the United States facilitates community economic development led to him being hired by ICCR as a staff member and then to a doctoral program in business ethics. He has always been interested in structural injustice and how businesses can behave in ways that being about greater fairness for those people most vulnerable to mistreatment.

His doctorate in business environment, ethics and public policy is from the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz Graduate School of Business, and he also earned an MSc in education for sustainability from London South Bank University, an M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary and an M.S. in finance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed articles in outlets that include Academy of Management Review, AIB Insights, Business and Human Rights Journal, Business & Society, Business and Society Review, Business Ethics Quarterly, Cross Cultural Management, Employee Relations, Futures, Human Resource Management, Human Resource Management Review, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Industrial Relations, Journal of Management Studies, among other journals. His current research interests include relational stakeholder theory, business and human rights, preventing human trafficking in global supply chains, and employment ethics.

He is currently past president of the International Association for Business & Society and a former division chair for the Social Issues in Management division of the Academy of Management. He serves as the religion, spirituality, and business ethics section editor at the Journal of Business Ethics and is also co-editing special issues for Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (on feminist epistemology in CSR) and Business & Society (on business responses to refugee crises).