Associate Senior Consultant

A lecturer in management, Ron joined the former Strathclyde Graduate Business School in 1991, and has taught on the UK and International MBA programmes in Asia, the Gulf and Europe, and IDGS programmes in Thailand and Hong Kong. He has also held concurrent visiting academic positions at institutions in Poland, Switzerland and Singapore. Resident in Abu Dhabi since 2005, he is responsible for the operations and development of the Business School’s campuses in the United Arab Emirates, which in addition to the MBA, offer an expanding range of postgraduate degree courses. Alongside the UAE, Ron also has responsibility for the International MBA centres in Oman, and Bahrain. Before moving to the UAE, he spent 6 years in Singapore and 3 years in Shanghai managing the International MBA centres in Asia.

Ron’s research interest focuses on institutional learning and sense-making processes in organisations for explicating and accommodating contextual uncertainty and ambiguity in strategic planning. In particular, he is interested in scenario thinking and associated future studies techniques, and the process issues and cognitive barriers which affect sense making and impede individual and group learning in these techniques. Alongside his academic activities, Ron has broad consulting experience, having designed and led numerous scenario and strategy projects with national and regional governments, non-governmental organisations, and a range of multinational and medium-sized companies in over fifteen countries, in a variety of industry sectors ranging from Airports & Airlines to Pharmaceuticals and Railways.  

A founding member of the Centre for Scenario Planning & Future Studies at Strathclyde Business School, Ron is a member of the World Futures Society and Futurists Network, and a co-author of the book “The Sixth Sense: Accelerating Organisational Learning with Scenarios”, published by Wiley in 2002. He has served on the Boards of several companies and has been an invited speaker/panelist at various senior management conferences, including the Economist CFO Roundtable, Asia Network and CEO Asia Roundtable conferences. 

Prior to joining Strathclyde Ron qualified as an accountant and spent 18 years working in senior positions in large multinationals in the Oil & Gas, Mining and Publishing industries in Canada, the US and the UK.