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Father of Social Management. Special Advisor to the Bureau for Policy Development of the United Nations Development Programme United Nations Development Programme |
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| Born | Buenos Aires, Argentina |
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| Nationality | Argentina |
Bernardo Kliksberg is an Argentine (of Jewish-Polish descent) Doctor of Economics, recognized around the world as the founder of a new discipline, social management, and a pioneer of development ethics, social capital and corporate social responsibility.
He is considered "one of the chief experts in the world in the fight against poverty" (Buenos Aires Económico, October 27, 2010), a "corporate social responsibility global guru" (La Prensa, Panama, November, 9, 2010), and "a tireless champion of ethics and economic and social inequality reduction" (Valor, Brazil May 27, 2010).
Kliksberg is the author of 50 books and hundreds of works on critical areas of development, corporate social responsibility, senior management, social capital, the fight against poverty, ethics and economics.
His most recent works are the international bestseller "Primero la gente" (19 editions), written with the Nobel Laureate in Economics Amartya Sen, and "Escándalos éticos", declared to be of cultural interest by the Legislature of the City of Buenos Aires (2011, ninth edition).
He has been an advisor to more than 30 countries and institutions, among them the UN, UNESCO, UNICEF, the International Labour Organization, the World Health Organization, the Organization of American States and the Pan American Health Organization.
He has been awarded dozens of honorary doctorate degrees by universities in multiple countries. Among other distinctions, King Juan Carlos I of Spain has awarded him the Order of Merit, the City of Buenos Aires has named him an Illustrious Citizen, the University of Buenos Aires has paid tribute to him by naming him a "Great Professor", and Guatemala has bestowed its highest honors upon him.
Kliksberg is currently the Special Advisor to the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Bureau for Political Development. He is President of the Ibero-American Network of Universities for Corporate Social Responsibility (composed of 235 universities from 23 different countries), and a member of the Advisory Council of the Global Conference on the Social Determinants of Health established by the World Health Organization (WHO), the High Level Advisory Commission created by United Nations Volunteers to prepare the First Global Report on Volunteerism, and the Advisory Committee of the International Institute for Peace, created by Rutgers University. He is the Chief Advisor (volunteer) for the NGO "A Roof for my Country", which has built eighty thousand homes for families in extreme poverty, is on the ground in nineteen countries, and has four hundred thousand young volunteers.
Bernardo Kliksberg has been married to Ana Kaul since 1973. He is the father of three children and has five grandchildren. Born in Buenos Aires, he currently resides in New York.
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Bernardo Kliksberg holds five university degrees, two of which are PhDs. He is a Doctor of Economics and Administrative Science, and holds MBa's Degrees in Sociology, Administration and Public Accounting from the University of Buenos Aires.
In every case, he graduated with the highest possible honors. He was awarded the University of Buenos Aires' Gold Medal, and the Diploma of Honor twice.
Kliksberg has pioneered new ways of thinking about development. Among other things, he is considered one of the international forerunners of corporate social responsibility. He is a recognized authority on social capital, a new field with very broad economic, managerial and social applications.
He is considered the creator of a new discipline, social management, which has spread throughout all of Latin America, and is widely applied in the fight against poverty. Europa Press stated that Kliksberg is considered to be the pioneer of "social management", in which the ethical dimension of the person is given priority in order to eradicate poverty. Furthermore, he is the founder of the United Nations' social management training program, which was the first of its kind in any international organization.
He is also recognized as one of the leaders of innovative thinking regarding state reform, public administration, civil service and the training of top public officials.
He has been the Chief Advisor to the Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Director of the Spain-UNDP Trust Fund "Towards an integrated and inclusive development in Latin America and the Caribbean".
He has been a consultant at the highest levels of government, as well as to business and social leaders in over 30 countries, in the fields of corporate social responsibility, economic development, the modernization of the state, social management, the fight against poverty and social capital development.
Kliksberg has founded several international institutions that have had a great impact on Latin America's development in key areas. One of these is the Latin American Center for Development Administration, which he co-founded in 1975 with the sponsorship of the United Nations.
He has also been an advisor to the UN, UNESCO, UNICEF, ILO, WHO, OAS, PAHO and other international agencies. He has directed the Inter-American Initiative on Social Capital, Ethics and Development of the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, coordinated the Development of Public Sector Management Capacity in Latin America Program of the UN's Global Division for Public Administration and Development Management, is an advisor to the General Director of the Pan American Health Organization, and was a member of the Advisory Committee of the Argentina, Peru and Latin-American Human Development Reports prepared by the UNDP.
His op-ed pieces are frequently published in some of the most prominent Spanish-language media outlets, such as Madrid's El País and Cinco Días, Buenos Aires' La Nación, Clarín, and Pagina 12, Montevideo's La República, Caracas' El Universal and the Spanish edition of Foreign Policy.
He is the author of 50 books and hundreds of papers on various areas of development, corporate social responsibility, senior management, social capital, the fight against poverty, ethics and economics. They are widely read internationally, and a lot of them are required reading in many universities.
Some of his works are considered classics and groundbreaking in the aforementioned areas, such as El Pensamiento Organizativo (more than 14 editions), Pobreza. Un tema impostergable (five editions), Hacia una economía con rostro humano (12 editions in Spanish and Portuguese) and Más ética, más desarrollo (19 editions, translated into Portuguese), "People first" with Amartya Sen (19 editions, translated into portuguese and mandarin), and "Escándalos Eticos" (9 editions). His works have been translated into English, French, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew and Portuguese.
Kliksberg has worked extensively to train future generations of Latin American professors in the areas that he has pioneered.
He is the current chair of la Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires' CENARSECS, an institution dedicated to the systematic promotion of corporate social responsibility.
He is the founder and president of the innovative and successful program "100 outstanding youths for an ethical development". According to the Argentine daily La Nación, this is a high-level training experience designed to educate new generations of public and private managerial leaders in the new disciplines, and to do so from a perspective where ethics and accountability are core values. Kliksberg has described this program as a "crusade to make this a world where ethics and development go hand in hand. A training program for young teachers committed to the public interest". The program has been declared to be of cultural interest by the Congress of the Argentine Republic (2010), and is replicated in Peru, Uruguay, and in process of replication in Brazil, Mexico Guatemala, Panama and other countries.
Kliksberg is a member of the Editorial Board of several major scientific journals focused on developmental issues in Latin America, the United States and other countries. Among them: the Fundaçao Getulio Vargas’ Revista de Administração Pública of Brazil, the CIDE’s Gestión y Política Pública in Mexico, La Revista Venezolana de Gerencia, Colombia's Cuadernos Latinoamericanos de Administración (Chair of the Editorial Board), Reforma y Democracia, Revista del Centro Latinoamericano de Administración para el Desarrollo, and La Revista Venezolana de Ciencias Sociales.
He has been appointed to the Editorial Board of the International Review of Administrative Sciences by the International Institute of Administrative Sciences (Brussels), which brings together more than one hundred of the world's countries. He is also a member of the Editorial Board of the University of Tel Aviv's Journal of Interdisciplinary Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the Editorial Board of the University of Colorado's Comparative Technology Transfer and Society.
Aside from his involvement in the scientific, international consultancy and teaching fields, Kliksberg does a large amount of volunteer work for various community service and civil society organizations. He is the Chief Advisor to "A Roof for my Country", which has a presence in nineteen countries, a board member of Save the Children Argentina, chair of AMIA's Social Policy Advisory Committee in Buenos Aires, a member of the Academic Committee of Uruguay's Latin American Center for Human Economy, on the Board of Directors of Argentina's Fundación Tzedaka and a member of Help Argentina's Advisory Council. He presides over the Open Chair of Ethics, Culture and Development of the Cultural Complex of the City of Buenos Aires and the San Martín Theater.
Bernardo Kliksberg is a recognized authority in the field of development. The Argentine daily Página 12 described him as "the greatest Latin American expert on poverty". The Brazilian magazine Valor said that he is "a tireless defender of ethics and social and economic inequality reduction"[1], while Paraguay’s La Nación stated that he is considered "an economics guru" around the world[2], and the daily El País (Uruguay) that he is "recognized as the father of a new discipline: ‘social management’". The publication Buenos Aires Económico stated that "this leading Argentine economist of humble origins has become a prominent figure, to the point of being today considered one of the chief global experts in the fight against poverty"[3]. The Brazilian magazine Carta Capital stated that he is "one of the first to spread the concepts of ethical development, social capital and corporate social responsibility"[4]. The Panamanian daily La Prensa described him as "the global corporate social responsibility guru".
José Fogaça, mayor of the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, said that with his book Más ética, más desarrollo, "through an unusual political rumination, Bernardo Kliksberg gives us a brave and honest work, in which the ancient struggle against social inequality finds in ethics its most legitimate, essential and fundamental element".
Bishop Jorge Casaretto, President of the Social Pastoral Commission of Argentina, has stated that Kliksberg's work "makes us see that when we talk about development we have to put the human person front and center and prioritize its ethical and spiritual dimensions."
Jorge del Castillo Gálvez, President of Peru's Council of Ministers, has said that the "intellectual and innovative value of Más ética, más desarollo makes it a required point of reference for the construction of a fair, prosperous and inclusionary Latin America”.
The Director of the Pan American Health Organization, Mirta Roses Periago, has described him as "an indefatigable and passionate spokesman for development ethics".
Among other accolades, he has been awarded a Doctor Honoris Causa by dozens of universities in the world, among them la Universidad de Buenos Aires[5] , la Universidad Rey Juan Carlos de Madrid, la Universidad Nacional de Nuevo León, México, la Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá, la Universidad Interamericana de México, la Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega de Perú, la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, la Universidad Nacional de la República Dominicana, la Universidad Simón Bolívar de Venezuela, la Universidad de Ciencias Empresariales y Sociales (UCES) de Argentina, Universidad de Río Cuarto, ande the National University of San Marcos in Lima, Peru. He has also received numerous distinctions, such as the 2006 Educator Award from the Catholic Church of Argentina and the 2009 Order of Civil Merit from King Juan Carlos I of Spain for "his personal and professional career" and his "extraordinary service to society", in the process becoming the first ever Argentine to earn said distinction[6].
His scientific work as a whole was unanimously declared to be of interest by the Argentine Senate "for its valuable intellectual contribution to the creation of more equitable societies and strong democracies"[7]. He has received the following awards: the 2005 AMIA Award[8], the 2005 Entrepreneurial Foundation for Sustainable Development’s Award, the 2008 University of Buenos Aires School of Economics' Professional Achievement Award, the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award from Argentina's Secretariat of Worship[9], the Mexican magazine Ganar-Ganar’s 2009 Award for his eminent career in Corporate Social Responsibility education in Latin America[10], and the University of Buenos Aires “Great professor” award 2011.
In June 2007, he became the first foreigner to receive an honorary doctorate degree from la Universidad Rey Juan Carlos de Madrid.
Among other distinctions, he has received the Community Service Award from Ezras Israel Congregation in the United States[11], the Peruvian Award for Excellence in Cooperative Action and the Bicentenary of Argentina’s Medal of Honor.
On April 8, 2010, the Legislature of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires declared him an Illustrious Citizen of Buenos Aires[12]. In explaining their reasoning, it stressed that "for 30 years, he has gained international recognition for his work on poverty, especially in Latin America. He has established himself as a pioneer of development ethics, social capital and corporate social responsibility, and the father of a new discipline, social management, which has spread throughout the entire continent, being vigorously applied in the fight against poverty"[13].
The renowned author Ernesto Sábato, a Cervantes Prize for Literature winner, wrote on the cover of his book "Escándalos Eticos" (2011): "I became excited upon reading Kliksberg’s books. His books are a call to turn dry statistics into a rallying cry to take on world hunger".