Curriculum Vitae

Reto Steiner is dean at the ZHAW School of Management and Law (Switzerland). His main areas of research and teaching include organizational design and change, local and regional governance, digital transformation in the public sector, public corporate governance, governmental communication, and public management. 

In 2022, Reto Steiner chaired the conference of the European Academy of Management (EURAM) and in 2028 he will chair the organizing committee of the colloquium of the European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS).. 

From 2002 until 2016, Reto Steiner was a senior lecturer, professor and member of the Management Board at the Center of Competence for Public Management at the University of Bern. From 2016 until 2017, Reto Steiner worked as the managing director at the Swiss Institute for Public Management in Bern. In 2013, he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and at the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong. At the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, he was a contract professor for Strategic Management in the Public Sector (2016-2018).  In 2020, Reto Steiner was Visiting Professor for "Global Governance" at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. Reto Steiner is involved in the governance of higher education institutions as well as in education and training.

Reto Steiner teaches at several universities (e. g., ETH Zurich, University of Bern). He serves on editorial boards of academic journals.The Scholar has many years of experience in consulting for public institutions. His previous clients include the Council of Europe, the Swiss Federal Council, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the Federal Chancellery, and various Swiss state and local governments. The focus of these projects has been organizational change, steering structures, and decentralization.

Reto Steiner is a member of the Council of Administration of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IIAS) in Brussels. Since 2013, he has been one of the two Members for Switzerland of the Group of Independent Experts on the European Charter of Local Self-Government (GIE) at the Council of Europe. Furthermore, he also presided over the Board of the Executive Program in Hospitality Management of the Swiss Hotel Association (2003-2018). From 2011 until 2017, Reto Steiner served as a member of the University Board of Bern University of Applied Sciences (2016-2017 as vice-president). From 2001 until 2019, Reto Steiner was a member of the Executive Committee of the Swiss Association of Administrative Sciences. Since 2022, he is member of the Board of Governors of Beta Gamma Sigma.

Last, but not least, the academic has political experience: Reto Steiner was a member of the Parliament of the Canton of Bern and is the current president of the Protestant Church in his hometown.