Karthik Ramanna is Professor of Business & Public Policy at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government and a fellow of St. John’s College.
An expert on business-government relations, sustainable capitalism, and corporate reporting & auditing, Professor Ramanna studies how organizations and leaders build trust with stakeholders. His scholarship has won numerous awards, including the Journal of Accounting & Economics Best Paper Prize, the Harvard Business Review-McKinsey Prize for “groundbreaking management thinking,” and three times the international Case Centre’s prizes for “outstanding case-writing,” dubbed by the Financial Times as “the business school Oscars.”
At Oxford, Professor Ramanna established the Case Centre on Public Leadership and the Transformational Leadership Fellowship, the latter a bespoke, by-invitation program for senior leaders looking to reimagine their public-service impact. In 2022, he co-founded the non-profit E-liability Institute, where he serves as principal investigator, with a mission to drive decarbonisation processes through rigorous GHG accounting. From 2016 to 2023, he was director of Oxford’s Master of Public Policy program that has educated over a thousand public leaders from about 120 countries. From July 2023, Professor Ramanna is on partial public-service leave from Oxford to advise the US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board*, an “auditor of auditors” in global markets.
Previously, he was a professor and the Marvin Bower Fellow at Harvard Business School, teaching in both the MBA and senior executive-education programs. He has a doctorate from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He lives in Oxford with his husband, Jon, and they enjoy dinner parties and touring Caravaggios.
“The Governance Playbook for Climate Standard-Setting,” April 2024: 1 - 26. [Commissioned Work by Google and Meta via Stern Strategy.]
“From Confusion to Clarity: A Pragmatic, Demand-Driven Approach to ESG Reporting,” PwC Climate and ESG Reporting Initiative, April 2023: 1 - 29. [Commissioned Work.]
“Commentary on the FRC Report ‘What Makes a Good Environment for Auditor Scepticism and Challenge’,” UK Financial Reporting Council, November 2022: 1 - 8. [Commissioned Work.]
“Building a Culture of Challenge in Audit Firms,” PwC Future of Audit Initiative, September 2019: 1 - 26. [Commissioned Work.]
“Bringing Down the Temperature During Polarizing Times,” Harvard Business Review Online, July 19, 2024.
“Managing in the Age of Outrage,” Harvard Business Review 101, no. 1, January–February 2023: 96 - 107.
“The metaphysics of regulatory capture,” Pro-Market: University of Chicago George Stigler Center August 2, 2021.
“The key to understanding the implosion of US conservatism,” Prospect Magazine February 12, 2021.
“Why do attempts at reforming capitalism fail?,” Fortune 10 October, 2020.
“Why Huawei Lost its Quest for World Domination,” The American Interest July 29, 2020.
“Should America Still Believe in Free Markets?,” The American Interest, July 2020 (Essays).
“Governments and specialist advisers must get along better,” Financial Times June 29, 2020.
“Business must reclaim prudent accounting principles,” Harvard Business Review Online June 12, 2020.
Karthik Ramanna and Oenone Kubie, “Building Better Judgment Amongst Policymakers Using the Case-Study Method,” Oxford Blavatnik School Technical Note (June 2020) [10].
“Friedman at 50: Is it Still the Social Responsibility of Business to Increase Profits?,” California Management Review (2020) 62, no. 3: 28 - 41.
“Thin Political Markets: The Soft Underbelly of Capitalism,” California Management Review (2015) 57, no. 2: 5 - 19.
“Ruling From the Shadows,” The New York Times November 22, 2015: SR6 (Sunday Review).
“The International Politics of IFRS Harmonization,” Accounting, Economics and Law—A Convivium (2013) 3, no. 2: 1 - 46.
*The views expressed are solely the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the PCAOB, the members of the Board, or the Board’s staff. The PCAOB makes no representation as to the accuracy or completeness of this information.