Professor George Burt

Emeritus Professor

Management, Work and Organisation Stirling,

Professor George Burt

Contact details

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http://www.stir.ac.uk/people/georgeburt

About me

Education:

BA (Accountancy, Glasgow Caledonian University) MBA (University of Strathclyde) PhD (The role of transitional objects to manage strategic change, University of Strathclyde) CA (Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland)

I joined the University of Stirling in May 2013 as Director of the Centre for Advanced Management Education and Director of Stirling MBA from the Department of Management, University of Strathclyde Business School. I was previously Director of Strathclyde’s MBA and MSc in International Management. During my twenty years at Strathclyde Business School I established and developed the Centre for Scenario Planning & Futures Studies (CSP&FS). CSP&FS hosted several international conferences on organisational foresight; undertook several large research projects; and hosted a number of training workshops for those interested in scenario planning and futures studies. Prior to joining Strathclyde Business School in September 1993, I qualified as a chartered accountant and also spent a number of years working with a large UK consultancy practice.

Research (1)

I conduct research on the relational processes of sensemaking, strategizing and changing to understand the process of organizational learning. My doctoral research was based on three in-depth, longitudinal case studies, with organisations in the whisky and spirits, paper, and IT consultancy industries in which I researched the impact of scenario planning as a contemporary approach to sensemaking and learning. Key was the role of ‘transitional objects’ in the process of learning and managing constancy and change. My subsequent publications have developed new insights about the role of ‘breakdowns’, ‘counter-intuition’, ‘surprise’ and ‘unintended consequences’ to trigger strategic change, identifying new insights about complex relational causal thinking as a key element of sensemaking with scenarios. I am a co-author of the best-selling book The Sixth Sense: Accelerating Organizational Learning with Scenarios, published by John Wiley & Sons.   Consultancy experience and expertise: I have been involved in designing and facilitating many private and public sector scenario and futures projects over a twenty year period of time, both in an educational and a consultant capacity. These projects have been undertaken in the UK and internationally with private and public sector organisations such as World Bank, Shell, ProRail Holland, PETRONAS Malaysia, de Beers, PayPal, DoosanBabcock, Lloyds Registry Quality Assurance, Caledonian Paper plc, the Edrington Group, Plan International, Stirling Council, Dumfries & Galloway Council, and City of Glasgow Council. I combine theoretical knowledge with this practical experience whether teaching MBA or MSc students or executives as part of executive education.

Projects

Climate Solution Programme Pilot and Launch
PI:
Funded by: Scottish Environment Protection Agency and Scottish Government
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Outputs (32)

Outputs

Conference Paper (unpublished)

Going against the grain: examining negative capability as an antecedent of dynamic capability in the Scotch Whisky Industry, 1960-85

Mackay D, Perchard A, Mackenzie N & Burt G (2017) Going against the grain: examining negative capability as an antecedent of dynamic capability in the Scotch Whisky Industry, 1960-85. British Academy of Management 31st Annual Conference, Warwick Business School, 05.09.2017-07.09.2017. https://www.bam.ac.uk/sites/bam.ac.uk/files/BAM2017__Digital_pdf.pdf