Karthik Ramanna

Karthik Ramanna

Focusing on public sector leadership, business-government relations, and sustainable capitalism.

RADAR THINKER

Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2025.

FAST FACT

Recipient of the Journal of Accounting and Economics Best Paper Prize.

FAST FACT

Recipient of the Harvard Business Review McKinsey Award for “groundbreaking management thinking.”

Ideas

An expert on business-government relations, sustainable capitalism, and corporate reporting and auditing, Karthik Ramanna studies how organisations and leaders build trust with stakeholders. As well as receiving the Journal of Accounting and Economics Best Paper Prize and the Harvard Business Review McKinsey Award for “groundbreaking management thinking,” he has also been awarded the international Case Centre’s prize for “outstanding case-writing” three times. At Oxford’s Blavatnik School he established the Case Centre on Public Leadership and the Transformational Leadership Fellowship, the latter a bespoke, by-invitation programme for senior leaders looking to reimagine their public-service impact. In 2022, Karthik 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.

Bio

Karthik Ramanna is professor of business and public policy at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government and a fellow at St John’s College. He teaches at the Blavatnik School on managing organisations in polarised times, which led to his 2024 book The Age of Outrage. From 2016 to 2023, Karthik was director of the Blavatnik School’s Master of Public Policy programme, which has educated over a thousand public leaders from about 120 countries. From July 2023, he 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, Karthik taught at Harvard Business School on both the MBA and senior executive-education programmes. He has a doctorate from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. 

Content

The Age of Outrage: How to Lead in a Polarized World (2024); ‘Governments Should Be Effective, Not Efficient’ (Harvard Business Review, December 2024); ‘Bringing Down the Temperature During Polarizing Times’ (Harvard Business Review online, July 2024); ‘Managing in the Age of Outrage’ (Harvard Business Review, Jan-Feb 2023); ‘The Metaphysics of Regulatory Capture’ (Promarket, August 2021); ‘The key to understanding the implosion of US conservatism’ (Prospect, February 2021); ‘Why do attempts at reforming capitalism fail?’ (Fortune, October 2020); ‘Why Huawei Lost Its Quest for World Domination’ (The American Interest, July 2020); Political Standards: Corporate Interest, Ideology, and Leadership in the Shaping of Accounting Rules for the Market Economy (2015).

Media picks

Verdict

In a world prone to outrage, leaders must navigate with grace, resilience, and strategic insight. ‘The Age of Outrage’ provides the tools for managing effectively amidst turmoil, ensuring your organization not only endures but thrives.”

Frances Frei, co-author of Move Fast and Fix Things

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