The person behind the ideas
The making of a body of work.
Sustainability. Capital markets. AI. A career that crosses disciplines.
Photo: Hugo Amaral / ECOAbout Bob
A career across disciplines.
Bob is a Visiting Professor of Management Studies at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School. He studies sustainability, capital markets, and how people can work with AI in research.
Through the Responsible Business Initiative and his engagement with the Ecoright, he seeks common ground across political divides.
September 2026
Scenes from Climate Week.
A few moments shared by Bob from Climate Week.
Current work & affiliations
Ideas put into practice.
- University of Oxford · Saïd Business School
- Visiting Professor of Management Studies
- Responsible Business Initiative
- Co-founder
- Novata
- Member, Sustainability Advisory Board
- KKR
- First Chair, Sustainability Expert Advisory Council
- Persefoni
- Founding Chair and Chair Emeritus, Sustainability Advisory Board
Starting points
Learning to look at organizations.
Bob studied pure mathematics and humanities at MIT and then sociology at Harvard. His research was focused on what leads to good organizational performance and how to report on those elements in both financial and nonfinancial terms.
He joined the Harvard Business School in 1979 and received tenure in 1989.
He was the founding Chairman of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board and one of the founders of the International Integrated Reporting Council. Both are now part of the International Sustainability Standards Board in the IFRS Foundation.
Career & intellectual journey
From studying practice
to helping shape it.
From corporate reporting and management to climate policy and collaboration with AI.
Selected milestones—not a complete CV.
Explore Bob’s Books
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- 1979–1989
Studying organizations
Bob joined the Harvard Business School faculty in 1979 and received tenure in 1989. His academic career brought the study of organizations into the world of business.
- 2010
Bringing the reports together
With Michael P. Krzus, he published One Report, examining how financial and nonfinancial reporting can support a sustainable strategy.
Explore One Report - 2014
From a report to a movement
The Integrated Reporting Movement, written with Michael P. Krzus, with Sydney Ribot, examined the institutions, incentives and practices behind a changing field.
Explore the Book - 2018
A wider conversation about standards
At Oxford Saïd, Bob and Richard Barker wrote a Green Paper exploring whether financial reporting standard-setters should also set standards for sustainability information.
- 2025
Thinking with AI
Dorothy and Me explores Bob’s relationship and collaboration with an AI agent.
Explore the Memoir - 2026
Climate, in a public voice
An American’s Guide to Climate Change brings the discussion to a general audience, making a case for practical, bipartisan action.
Explore the Climate Book - 2026
Research with human and machine
Making Sustainability Financially Relevant, written with Shivaram Rajgopal, explores human–machine collaboration in financial analysis.
Explore the Book - 2026
Finding common ground
With Timothy M. Doyle, Bob examines the history of SEC Rule 14a-8 in a Responsible Business Initiative paper.
Explore the Paper
Connecting the work
Information is only the beginning.
Bob’s most recent work looks at organizational performance by both companies and investors and how performance is affected by and influences the broader economic and political context.
Climate is a major focus of Bob’s. He firmly believes we need stable long-term policy solutions and that those solutions can only be achieved by bipartisanship.
Bob is highly focused on AI and has developed the concept of Hybrid Intelligent Teams (multiple AI agents in different roles with a Human Coherence Anchor) and how these teams can be used in research and other applications.
