James Austin

Professor James Austin is the leading academic expert on management in developing countries, on strategic corporate responsibility, and on social entrepreneurship. He has advised corporations, governments, and nonprofit organizations in forty-five countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa on the unique challenges of doing business and creating social and economic value. In addition to dozens of articles and more than 100 case studies, Professor Austin has written sixteen books on management and development issues. James Austin is the Eliot I. Snider and Family Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

 His highly-acclaimed book, Managing in Developing Countries: Strategic Analysis and Operating Techniques, is the basic primer on how to realize the enormous untapped potential in the developing world. Drawing on his groundbreaking research for this book and a companion book of cases studies, Professor Austin speaks with unparalleled authority on how to operate in the fundamentally different economic and political environments of the developing world. He is a co-author of Social Partnering in Latin America that analyzes successful alliances in that region.

As a co-founder of the Harvard Business School’s Social Enterprise Initiative, he pioneered the field of social entrepreneurship. He received the Pioneer Leadership Award from the Aspen Institute in recognition of his work. In his award winning book on strategic alliances between businesses and nonprofits, The Collaboration Challenge, he examines how these alliances can increase customer satisfaction, improve employee recruitment and morale, promote brand identity, strengthen corporate culture, build good will, and create testing grounds for innovation. He identifies the areas with the most strategic potential for such alliances and offers leaders practical guidance for making it work.