R. Edward Freeman

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). 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 Bridging the Values Gap (Barret-Kohler, 2015) Stakeholder Theory: The State of the Art (Cambridge, 2010) and_ Managing for Stakeholders(Yale, 2007). He is the author or editor of over thiry volumes and one hundred and fifty 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  honorary doctorates (DHC) in economics from Comillas University in Madrid, The Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, and an honorary doctorates in Management e from Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands, and Sherbrooke University in Canada 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 from the World Resources Institute and Aspen Institute, the Humboldt University Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility, the Academy of Management, and the Society for Business Ethics. He has worked with many executives and companies around the world, and his writing on stakeholder theory has been translated into many languages.  

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.

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