Brunel Business School launches executive development programme

Prof Braganza brings with him 17 years' experience at the Cranfield School of Management's Centre for Organisational Transformation and will be Brunel Business School's first professor to specialise in this important field of business management.

At Brunel University, in Uxbridge, West London, Prof Braganza will develop open and customised management development programmes as well as leading conferences and practitioner-led research clubs. His research will focus on the role of CEOs in large scale transformation programmes, strategic integration across functional and organisational boundaries, new organisational forms and the creation of technology-based business models.

Prof Braganza's appointment is the first of a series of steps that Brunel Business School is taking as it enters the Executive Development arena. The plans form an integrated part of the Business School's new 5 year strategy that will help deliver a balanced economy for the School and reduce its dependency on HEFCE and overseas student income. The School is also aligning its research and development activities to map to practitioners and industry and is fostering partnerships with the aim of co-creating knowledge through Brunel's innovative research centres, including the Centre for Research into Emotion Work and The Centre for Research in Marketing. Brunel has also invested in purpose built facilities for the development of executives, to better meet their unique needs.

“The executive development market is highly sophisticated,“ comments Prof Zahir Irani, Head of Brunel Business School. “Organisations and individual senior managers expect training and development interventions to deliver performance improvements that create value and increase competitiveness, locally and globally. Brunel has invested in dedicated facilities and appointed Prof Braganza to create a School-wide capability that specialises in this area.

“Our aim is to provide business leaders with leading edge practices that are grounded in evidence and theory. Our executive development programmes will go beyond the curriculum of our MBA programmes by combining personal and leadership development with practical tools and techniques that enable executives to address complex challenges,“ continues Prof. Irani.

Prof Braganza comments: “Brunel Business School's depth of research and teaching capabilities provides an excellent foundation for building executive development programmes. An integral part of any leadership role is change and transformation management and, as such, will feature prominently across the executive development programmes I am developing at Brunel. Senior managers that fail to make change and transformation an integral part of their strategy development process are failing their organisation and not fulfilling their leadership role.“

Brunel Business School's executive development programmes are due to be launched towards the end of 2008.