Credentials
25 years running an advertising agency, then helped launch the first MBA in Sustainable Management in the US as founding provost. An MBA from Kellogg, MA in religious studies from Loyola University Chicago and a PhD in Moral Philosophy focusing on American Pragmatism.
Interests & Passions
It is most important for students and executives to reflect on their values and vision of the world that is driving their decisions and actions in delivering the goods and services society needs. It is an area and depth too often overlooked as we focus more on strategy and tactics, but this is the level where the larger shift in management thinking leading to change has to take place.
Introduction
Ron Nahser is the Senior Wicklander Fellow at the Institute of Business and Professional Ethics, and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Nature and Culture at DePaul University. He is the Provost Emeritus of Presidio Graduate School and Professor of Pragmatic Philosophy and Ecological Economics, Center for Confucian Entrepreneurship and East Asia Civilizations, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. He is also Executive Director of Corporantes, Inc., and Strategic Advisor to the UN Principles for responsible Management Education(PRME) Secretariat.
In addition to publishing numerous books and articles, he is the author of Learning to Read the Signs: Reclaiming Pragmatism for the Practice of Sustainable Management and Journeys to Oxford: Nine Pragmatic Inquiries into the Practice of Values in Business and Education.
He lectures and consults with business and academic audiences in the US and internationally on business values, vision, marketing strategy, branding, social responsibility and integrative sustainable management.
Why am I an OPEN fellow?
I am an OPEN fellow because: first I believe that, as has been said often, the behavior of society is largely dominated by the business mind. Therefore the education of management is essential to our life on this planet. And second, OPEN with its perspective growing out of the UN global conversation offers a systemic way to approach this vital task of profit, non-profit and government management education providing society’s goods and services.
How can I help change agents?
Helping students and executives reflect on their experience to clarify and ignite their values and vision/world-view to pursue their “calling” or higher purpose…so that all life flourishes. See Presidio Graduate School description. https://www.pragmaticinquiry.org/presidio-graduate-school-what-are-your-ideas-to-change-the-world/