One of the world experts on business leadership urged local company Directors to rethink how their organisations are managed following the banking crisis, during a masterclass at the University of Ulster yesterday.
Professor Andrew Kakabadse was speaking to representatives from some of Northern Ireland’s leading companies including Northern Ireland Water, BBC, Tyco, Bombardier, Citi, HCl and Montupet Almac, Grafton Recruitment and Deloitte, at the Ulster Business School in the Belfast campus.
In the aftermath of the banking disaster, both in the UK and Ireland, corporate governance and the role of the Board gains greater prominence, Professor Kakabadse gave a lecture on ‘Rethinking Leadership’ – the re-evaluation of how the Board is led and how that Board leads the organisation.
Professor Kakabadse, who is a Visiting Professor at the Ulster Business School, said: “In the rethinking of our leadership behaviour the key issues are the alignment of the roles of Chair and Board Director and the engagement of all in this debate within a unique strategic context for each organisation. The organisations that prosper already have the openness and trust to explore the dilemmas within the organisation.”
The expert has developed the world’s largest research database on Board leadership and governance with the views of over 12000 Chairman and Directors from 4500 Boards represented.
Professor Heather Farley, Head of Department of Management and Leadership at Ulster, said: “As Professor Kakabadse emphasised in his lecture, in a tough environment that is not going to get any easier in the near future, it is very important for managers and Board members alike, in any organisation, to embrace a culture of openness in considering their own particular strategic context and the key issues facing them. The value proposition being offered must be consistently understood, particularly in how this value is being created and clearly there is an integral and vitally important strategic role for the HR function in all of this.”
Professor Marie McHugh, Dean of the Ulster Business School, said: “The School has, over a long period of time, worked extensively with Andrew who is an acknowledged world expert on executive leadership behaviour.
"The masterclass provided an opportunity for many representatives of Northern Ireland’s public and private sectors to explore key issues relating to how the Board is led, and how the Board leads the organisation. These topics are central to our very successful MSc Management and Corporate Governance, which is accredited by the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators (ICSA).”
The masterclass was run jointly by the Ulster Business School and the ICSA's Belfast branch.