Eric J. Van den Steen

Eric Van den Steen is an Associate Professor of Business Administration and Marvin Bower Fellow in the Strategy Unit. Professor Van den Steen's research studies the interaction between strategy and organization, and how both are shaped by managers' fundamental beliefs, vision, and potential strategic disagreements. His latest work focuses on the nature of strategy and of competitive advantage and how they interact with organization and leadership. He has also written on corporate culture, knowledge management, corporate governance, sources of managerial overoptimism, and the role of strategic disagreement in driving mergers and acquisitions.

Professor Van den Steen has taught the first-year Strategy course and developed and teaches the second-year elective Creating and Sustaining Competitive Advantage. In HBS executive education, he has taught in the Leadership Best Practices program and currently teaches the strategy component of the Program for Leadership Development.

Prior to joining the Business School, Professor Van den Steen was on the faculty of MIT's Sloan School of Management, where he was recognized for his teaching. He worked as a consultant, first at Arthur D. Little and later at McKinsey & Company, and holds a MS in Mechanical Engineering from the KULeuven (Belgium), an MBA from the University of Chicago, and a PhD from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.