Joining the Kellogg School faculty in 1981 as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Marketing, Steve Burnett currently serves as Associate Dean of Executive Education and Professor of Strategic Management.  In his decanal role, Steve is responsible for the School’s extensive portfolio of certificate or non-degree executive programs as well as the James L. Allen Center, the School’s 150 bedroom executive education facility.  In academic year 2007, the School conducted over 160 executive programs for approximately 6000 senior managers from every region of the world.  These programs included 50 different open enrollment offerings in addition to custom programs for a variety of major organizations.

Professor Burnett has taught in the Kellogg’s Advanced Executive Program since 1983 and became the program’s Academic Director in 1987.  The AEP, started in 1951 and now completing its 113th class, is one of the world’s oldest senior management programs.  Steve also was the Academic Director of the School’s pioneering International Advanced Executive Program at Burgenstock, Switzerland, from 1985 through 1991.  He founded, directed, and continues to teach in the Kellogg Management Institute, a nine-month general management program, now in its 16th year.

The Kellogg School invented the custom or company-specific executive program category in 1973, and Professor Burnett has played an active role in developing and popularizing the notion that custom executive programs can be powerful forces for implementing organizational change.  In addition to lecturing and writing on custom programs, he has designed, directed, and taught in dozens of Kellogg School custom offerings for such companies as Ernst & Young, General Electric, International Paper, General Motors, Goodyear, Motorola, ExxonMobil, Exelon, USG, Honeywell, R.R. Donnelley, the Zurich Insurance Group, and many others.

Professor Burnett’s research, teaching, and consulting interests focus on the interface of corporate, business, and market strategy.  He taught marketing, business/corporate strategy, and general management in the School’s full- and part-time MBA programs for many years and now teaches extensively in its full range of executive offerings, including custom and open enrollment programs as well as in the School’s EMBA programs in Evanston, Hong Kong, Germany, and Israel. He has lectured, conducted workshops, and advised top management on marketing and strategy issues in many countries for some of the world’s best known firms, examples include:  Allstate Insurance, Bank of America, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Cadbury Schweppes, Caterpillar, CIGNA Companies, HP, IBM, O’Melveny & Myers, the Travelers, UOP, and Young & Rubicam.

His research on marketing and strategy has appeared in Research in Marketing, Journal of Marketing, Strategic Planning Management, Kellogg on Integrated Marketing, and other publications. His writing on management education has been published in the Harvard Business Review, the Bricker Bulletin, and Advances in Strategic Management.  He has also served as a McKinsey judge for the Harvard Business Review andsupervised numerous case studies.

Professor Burnett is a summa cum laude graduate of Christian Brothers University, where he received the Delta Sigma Pi Scholarship Key.  He holds a master’s and doctorate in business administration from Indiana University and as a doctoral candidate was the E.W. Kelley Research Fellow. He is a member of several professional and honorary societies, including Alpha Kappa Psi and Beta Gamma Sigma.


Business Policy
Competitive Analysis
Customer Service
Marketing Management
Marketing Research
Marketing Strategy/Planning/Policy
Strategic Management
Strategy