Distinguished Professor Dexter Dunphy 

Professor Dexter Dunphy is Professor of Management at the Australian Graduate School of Management, University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.  At the AGSM he teaches in the School's Executive, MBA and PhD programs.  

Dexter's main research and consulting interests are in the management of organisational change and human resource management. He also has a special interest in comparative management, particularly in East Asia where he has travelled widely. His research is published in about 60 articles and 15 books, including the Australian best sellers (with Doug Stace)  Under New Management:  Australian Organizations in Transition (McGraw Hill, 1990) and ‘Beyond the Boundaries: Leading and Re-creating the Successful Enterprise’ (with Doug Stace, McGraw Hill, 1994).  Dexter has consulted to over 150 private and public sector organisations in Australia and abroad. His consulting includes advising on major organisational transformations and transitions, design of human resource strategies and systems, "trouble shooting" and conflict resolution. He has also thirty years experience in working with senior executives, managers and other professionals in enhancing their managerial skills through executive workshops, consulting and counselling.  

Dexter holds the degrees of BA(hons) M.Ed(hons) and Dip Ed from Sydney University and Ph.D in Sociology from Harvard University.  After receiving his PhD from Harvard University, he held the position of Assistant Professor there, teaching in both the Graduate School of Business and the Department of Social Relations.  He returned to the University of New South Wales where he held successive positions as Senior Lecturer in Sociology (1967–1969) and Professor of Business Administration and Head, Department of Organisation Behaviour in the Faculty of Commerce (1970–1982).  He then took up his current appointment as Professor of Management at the Australian Graduate School of Management.   He has also held visiting professorships at Harvard University, USA, Keio University, Japan, Shanghai First Medical College, PRC,  the National University of Singapore and the Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration, Finland.  He has been a recipient of a Fullbright Senior Scholar Award and of the University of New South Wales, Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence in 1993.  From 1990 to 1997 he was Director of the Centre for Corporate Change at the AGSM, one of twenty Special Research Centres funded by the Australian government. 

Interview with Professor Dexter Dunphy

Do you see yourself as a leader? What is your vision?

Yes, leader and change agent. My mission is to help create high performance organisations which have the ability to grow and change, which cultivate rather than destroy human capability and ability, and which actively contribute to a just society and a sustainable and diverse biosphere. 

What has motivated you to pursue a career as a theorist and academic in the area of Management?

I began my academic career as an educator - my first two degrees were in Education and I taught primary school and undergraduates at Sydney University. My inspiration came from the US philosopher and educator, John Dewey, and the Progressive Education Movement. It became clear to me that classroom education could not be improved without major institutional reforms. I discovered Sociology, went to Harvard to undertake a PhD in Sociology, became interested in Organisational Theory and ended up with a joint appointment between the Social Science School and the Graduate School of Business. At the Business School, there was a remarkable pool of theorists, researchers and consultants who were making a major impact on the development of organisations. They were theorising but there they were also testing their theories in practice. I have always seen the economy as central to modern western societies and organisations as the core constituent cells in the economy. If you want to affect societal change, changing significant corporations is one way to go.

What difficulties have you encountered in gaining the various positions you have held and in acquiring recognition for your work?

At one level, acquiring a reputation in the field was not so difficult - it simply required having innovative ideas, linking those ideas up with appropriate research, and a lot of time creating networks, writing, publishing, teaching and speaking in public. What has been a lot more difficult has been to have these ideas put into practice by managers rather than to have them give lip service. Fortunately I have been able to find and work with a variety of people in organisations who have been as committed as I am to making change that reshapes the organisation for future performance and builds human and environmental capability. Perhaps the most difficult group to convince about the need for change has been many of my colleagues within University settings.

You have described the Sustainable Corporation as one that meets the 21st Century challenges of human and ecological sustainability by continually  renewing human talent and the life of the planet, 

a. what are the most effective ways of renewing human talent?

In renewing human talent, the basic work needs to be done by governments through education and training. Unfortunately governments of both political persuasions in Australia have been undermining the public education system. The public education system should provide the skills platform on which organisations can build more specific vocational skills. Intelligent human resources policies are the main way that corporates build human talent. 

b. Do you believe that governments need to play a stronger role in ensuring that corporations use ecologically sustainable resources?

Yes - but legislation primarily creates compliance with demands for what are really fairly low levels of sustainability practice. Government legislation can help prevent arsenic going into rivers, maintain basic hygiene in food preparation etc. Effective sustainability strategies need to go well beyond compliance to the active initiation of positive policies. 

c. Given that many large multinationals are thriving despite not practising human and ecologically sustainable principles, why do you believe that organizations that are not practising these principles will face extinction?

Because soon grassroots citizen movements and the 'democracy' of the internet will make pariahs of organisations which don't practice sustainable strategies. Monsanto is a current case in point. The CEO has resigned, the new CEO has apologised to the former critics of the organisation's policies and the basic business strategies have been modified, new ethical principles put in place.

 Can you outline the actions that you have implemented in an organisation to assist it create a sustainable future?

I have been influential for some time in the area of sustainable human resource practices. Recently I have begun working with some organisations on aspects of community responsibility and ecological sustainability as well. I don't feel free to discuss particular cases in print. 

What are your perceptions about the contribution women are making and can make in implementing practices that achieve a sustainable workforce and environment?

Their major impact so far has been in improving "family friendly" policies in the workplace. More women are now researching issues of equity and justice in the workforce and the workplace and producing informative research with strong policy implications. Many human resource executives are women and many (not all) are introducing more "heart" into people policies in the workplace. I would like to see more women employees demand more sustainable internal and external policies from their organisations, particularly in the areas that affect the care and education of children (but so should men!).

How do you define organisational learning? What is its significance in relation to corporate and managerial development and what is necessary for effective organisational learning to take place?

In a world of dramatic change, the organisation that does not learn is doomed to fail. What brought success in the past may no longer work in a different future. Organisational learning is the ability to innovate new strategies that reinvent and reshape the organisation for future performance, to seek feedback on whether the strategies are achieving the desired outcomes, and to revise the strategies and/or their implementation on the basis of experience. I see many organisations where the organisational memory is lost through turnover, where strategies are implemented but not monitored and evaluated and where learning, if it takes place, is ignored, lost or rejected.

 Are you satisfied with the pace and extent to which Australian companies are not using the 'cookie cutter' approach of applying US models?

One of the things that has concerned me for years is the way in which US management practices are often adopted around the world without any understanding of the cultural context. This is a critical issue at the moment with so many global mergers taking place, often spearheaded by US companies. Many US companies have a "cookie cutter" approach to creating subsidiaries. They are all the same, like McDonalds' outlets. Australia has some strong cultural similarities to the US, but also some distinctively different values. Consequently we need to learn from the US where it is appropriate but not slavishly follow US fads. Apart from cultural differences, the difference in the relative sizes of the economies and of the larger corporations also means that some US management practices are not appropriate here. One of the reasons that I and some of my colleagues have conducted management research on Australian companies and published this here, is that it is the best evidence we have of what actually works here rather than what is recommended on the basis of some American guru's untested ideology or of valid management research undertaken in the US which may or may not apply here.

What changes would you like to see in management training and business schools in the dawn of the internet and the phenomenal pace of growth of dotcom companies that are defying traditional structures of business?

I think that we need a thorough rethink of management education in the internet age. The notion that students should be lectured in a classroom in a Business School at a particular time seems to me archaic. Management knowledge is best delivered to people where they are, at a time and place that suits them and when they need it in their career path. It is more about learning than teaching. I had a major part in developing the Australian Graduate School of Management's EMBA by distance learning and setting up the Change Management Qualification (CMQ) component which is on-line. I think that in future we will see the development of global EMBA's where the relatively rare lectures will be delivered on-line by the most outstanding management academics and practitioners in the world; where the learning materials will be of high quality, packaged by curriculum experts, and downloaded on line; and where face-to-face learning will be done locally and focus on exploring the ideas in the materials and on learning behavioural skills. There will be much greater choice for participants so that they can match what they need to learn with where they are in their career. And there will be a lot more real education on the job in the workplace with mentoring.