Reto Steiner is Dean of the ZHAW School of Management and Law (Triple Crown accredited business school). He also teaches at the Universities of Bern and ETH Zurich. From 2002 to 2016, Reto Steiner was a member of the executive board at the Center of Competence for Public Management at the University of Bern, from 2016 to 2017 he was managing director at the Swiss Institute for Public Management in Bern, and from 2016 to 2018 he was a contract professor at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. In 2013, Professor Reto Steiner 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. In 2020, Reto Steiner was a visiting professor for "Global Governance" at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. Reto Steiner is involved in university governance as well as education and training.
In 2022, Reto Steiner was Chairman of the Annual Conference of the European Academy of Management (EURAM) and in 2028 he will chair the organizing committee of the European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) colloquium. Since 2025, Reto Steiner has been Vice President of the European Group for Public Administration (EGPA).
His research focuses on:
- Local and regional governance
- Digital transformation and the use of artificial intelligence in government
- Semi-autonomous organizations and public enterprises
Reto Steiner also has training, continuing education, and consulting experience in the following areas:
- Public management
- State organization
- Management of educational institutions
- Government communication
- Decentralization and capacity building in development cooperation and election observation (field experience: Ukraine, India, and Southeast Europe, among others)
In 2015, Reto Steiner was included in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ranking of Switzerland's most influential economists. His article on the use of artificial intelligence in government in the 2024 issue of Public Management Review was the most downloaded article of the year in the journal.