Simon ZADEK
Member of ICTSD’s Governing Board
Dr. Simon Zadek, a British national, is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Centre for Government and Business of Harvard University’s Kennedy School. He founded, and was until recently Chief Executive of AccountAbility, where he established the organisation’s global leadership in sustainability standards, collaborative governance and responsible competitiveness, extending its impact from bases in Beijing, São Paulo, London and Washington, and through activities in South Africa and across the Middle East.
Simon sits on the International Advisory Board of the Brazilian business network, Instituto Ethos, the Advisory Board of the sustainability fund manager, Generation Investment Management, and the Boards of ICTSD and the Employers’ Forum on Disability. In 2003 he was named a World Economic Forum ‘Global Leader for Tomorrow’.
Dr. Zadek is one of the leading big-picture global thinkers on corporate social responsibility and accountability. His previous roles include Visiting Professor at the Copenhagen Business School, the Development Director of the New Economics Foundation, and founding Chair of the Ethical Trading Initiative. He has served on numerous Boards and Advisory Councils, including the State of the World’s Commission for Globalisation, the ILO’s World Commission on the Social Dimensions of Globalisation, the UN Commission for Social Development Expert Group on CSR, and the founding Steering Committee of the Global Reporting Initiative.
He has authored, co-authored, and co-edited numerous publications, including more recently two Harvard Working Papers on the role of multi-stakeholder partnerships in development and governance, Governing Partnership Governance (2006) and The Logic of Collaborative Governance (2005). He has written extensively on the impact of corporate responsibility on the competitiveness of nations Responsible Competitiveness (2005). His PhD thesis was published as The Economics of Utopia (1994), and published an anthology of his writings Tomorrow’s History (2004). His book, The Civil Corporation: the New Economy of Corporate Citizenship (2001), has become a classic in the field, and has been recognised by the Academy of Management by being honoured as the Best Book Social Issues Award 2006.