Gervase Bushe named one of HR’s Most Influential Thinkers

Sep 22, 2016

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Gervase Bushe, Professor of Leadership and Organization Development at the Beedie School of Business.

Gervase Bushe, Professor of Leadership and Organization Development at the Beedie School of Business.

Beedie School of Business professor Gervase Bushe has been named to a prestigious list of the 30 Most Influential Thinkers in the field of Human Resources.

For the past 11 years, Britain’s HR Magazine has annually revised the HR Most Influential Rankings, a list of the HR practitioners and thinkers shaping the world of people strategy, and whose ideas and actions are influencing practices in HR across the globe.

Bushe is listed in the Most Influential Thinkers category, alongside distinguished luminaries from top business schools around the world, and co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington.

“My main interest has always been to influence the practice of management to create great organizations that aren’t just profitable but are good for the people who work in them and the communities they operate in”, says Bushe.  “So it is particularly satisfying to be acknowledged in this way and very surprising given that I have spent almost no time in the UK. I will have to start going there more.”

Bushe is the Professor of Leadership and Organization Development at the Beedie School of Business. He is an expert in transforming organizational structures, culture and processes away from command and control toward more collaborative work systems.

He is an award-winning author of over 80 papers and three books on organizational change, leadership, teams, and teamwork, and has won the prestigious Douglas McGregor award twice for his research. He regularly consults on organizational development to corporations around the world.

Clear Leadership, a book on working collaboratively, has been translated into 6 languages and licensed instructors teach the Clear Leadership course in organizations around the world, including all the health authorities in BC.  Currently he is helping to design a leadership curriculum for physician residency programs in Canada and elsewhere.

His research and writing on Dialogic Organization Development (Dialogic OD) is regarded as the next step in the evolution of organizational change theory. It explains the underlying processes that make it possible for leaders, managers and consultants to engage employees and other stakeholders in effectively responding to complex issues.

In 2015 he chaired the first ever International Conference on Dialogic OD. The conference brought together authors of some individual chapters in Bushe’s latest book, Dialogic Organization Development: The Theory and Practice of Transformational Change to engage in a dynamic interactive discussion with 140 attendees at SFU’s Wosk Center for Dialogue.

His newest research, with Beedie professors Chris Zatzick and Brent Lyons, is studying how companies can employ the intellectually and developmentally disabled in ways that provide competitive advantages to businesses.

The HR Most Influential list is compiled by HR Magazine’s editorial team in conjunction with expert panels of HR headhunters, academics, former HR directors, and readers of HR Magazine.

View the full list at hrmagazine.co.uk/hr-most-influential