FACULTY Q&A // Meet Professor Kurt April
We chat to Prof April about his research in leadership and where it began, and his own take on the case method in business education
Professor Kurt April PhD, MBA, MSc(Eng), HDE, BSc(Eng), NDip(EE), NDip(LS) is currently the Allan Gray Chair, an endowed professorship, specialising in Leadership, Diversity & Inclusion and Director of the Allan Gray Centre for Values-Based Leadership at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business, where he has been a faculty member since February 1998. He is also a faculty member of Duke Corporate Education at Duke University, an adjunct faculty of Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, and a Non-Executive Director of the Achievement Awards Group (AAG) as well as bountiXP.
Prof April is particularly recognised by GSB students and alumni for his signature “Personal Leadership” course, which he pioneered to make part of the core curriculum for the MBA programme, and for his research on the practice of steward leadership, about which he co-authored a book with Julia Kukard and Kai Peters in 2013. Prof April’s latest book – his twelfth – is The Lived Experiences of Exclusion in the Workplace: Psychological & Behavioural Effects, co-authored with Babar Dharani and Amanda April (2023).
...
CWC: Tell us more about your field of research – what drew you to leadership?
KA: I arrived as a student at the GSB to do an MBA (1997), being an electronic engineer who had moved into engineering research management. During our MBA, we had to choose our dissertation project and electives and I, typical of the engineers on the course at the time, chose all of the financial courses (like M&A, and options & derivatives, etc.) for electives and had secured Professor Mike Page (a finance professor and the MBA Director at the time) as my supervisor. However, one of the lecturers at the time, Rob Macdonald, challenged me to think about what I was doing. He stated that, being an engineer, I already had good mathematical, computing, and modelling skills, and that finance courses and a finance dissertation were not going to grow my skills level significantly, just add new vocabulary to what I could already do well. He asked me to reconsider my choices, particularly given the money I paid to come on to an MBA course (and I had a student loan from a bank to pay for the MBA).
I therefore decided to pivot and do courses that were outside of my technical skills-set and focussed more on human skills, i.e. leadership (which was just an elective then), negotiations, etc. I also changed my MBA dissertation to research leadership, but through the lens of something I was familiar with: chaos theory, complex adaptive systems theory, and complexity theory. I was going to interview many CEOs and executive directors to hear about what the real foci should be for aspiring managers and emerging leaders. I ultimately interviewed and engaged self-reported inputs from 28 executive leaders. The title of my dissertation was: “An investigation into the applicability of new science, chaos theory and complexity theory to leadership, and development of guiding principles for the modern leader and organisation”.
In February 1998, I joined the GSB as a junior faculty member (with an MBA and also a master’s degree in electronic engineering, but with an intention of studying further), but also won the prestigious Sainsbury Scholarship in that year to study a PhD, the start of which would be physically spent at Oxford University in the UK. I still did not have the courage then to fully move into leadership studies, so my PhD thesis was entitled: “A resource-based view of the firm: Integrating the role of IT as a strategic resource (An empirical study of South African personal financial services firms: 1999-2003)”. I was essentially studying the four blue-chip, dominant companies in the industry: Old Mutual, Sanlam, Liberty, and Momentum. After living and studying in Oxford in the UK from 1998 to 1999, I returned to the GSB and started lecturing “IT Strategy” as a new course, which I offered then as part of the suite of courses at the GSB as this was clearly the focus of my PhD and previous work experience in engineering research management.
Rob Macdonald, who had in the meantime become the MBA Director, also invited me to co-teach the “Leadership” course with him. I did so on one condition: that I would refocus the course away from mainly studying successful leaders from around the globe (and emulating what they have done or were doing), and introduce a new pedagogy that was going to be unique from many of the other MBA leadership courses at business schools around the world. It would instead be focussed on personal transformation. I drew on the skills of my wife, who was trained in human skills and was an adjunct faculty member in UCT’s Department of Social Work and was a coach at the GSB in the Centre for Leadership & Public Values, and we jointly re-wrote the leadership pedagogy of the “Leadership” course.
I also managed to convince the Commerce Faculty and GSB Academic Committee that “Leadership” should not remain an elective course, but that every student who came through the doors of the GSB should be engaged in personal transformation and enhancement, and I fully enjoyed what I did thereafter. At that stage I was teaching the “IT Strategy” course, did a teaching stint in “Operations Management”, and was also involved in the “Company Analysis” course, but slowly moved out of those, and focussed solely on leadership: teaching it on the MBA, also on the GSB Associate in Management (AIM) course, on many executive courses at the GSB, as well as in various departments on UCT’s upper campus (engineering, education, and computer science).
Rob and I eventually co-wrote a book on Rethinking Leadership, and when he left to work in the private sector, the entire course was then my responsibility. That pedagogy (which was published in the Journal of Management Education in the USA) has been tweaked many times over the years, and still forms the basis of the “Personal Leadership: Inside-Out” course at the GSB.
CWC: What current trends, specific to Africa, in terms of leadership have you noticed?
KA: There is a big focus in Africa on honouring our indigenous knowledge and systems. Therefore, leadership research and studies are starting to reflect that too: decoloniality, communal leadership (with a lot of focus on Ubuntu as well as Maat), shared and distributed leadership, leadership and innovation, diversity, equity, justice and inclusive leadership, centering indigenous ways of being, and deconstructing patriarchy in all of its forms (socially, in the workplace, and interpersonally).
CWC: What key traits do leaders of our time need to have?
KA: Traits are a very old focus in terms of leadership because traits fall in and out of fashion, and it is hard to pinpoint which traits fit a particular lifecycle of an organisation or the lifecycle of someone’s career path, or whether certain traits are even relevant under certain conditions and in certain contexts – so we do not talk about traits of leaders any longer. Rather, skill-sets and capabilities are more acceptable terms. We do know that, currently, particular leader capabilities are being sought by organisations around the globe: openness to learning, ongoing curiosity, critical thinking, great dialogue skills, inclusive approaches to leading, constructive teamwork and collaboration, discernment, courage, ‘authenticity’, engagement with diversity (people, ideas, experiences, skills), creativity, emotional maturity, compassion, adaptability and flexibility, comfortability in uncertainty and ambiguity, as well as digital literacy.
CWC: Why are cases important in business education for students?
KA: The study of cases bridges the gap between theory and practice, encourages a mindset of continuous learning, and exposes students to real-world scenarios and challenges. These are then debated (after weighing pros and cons) and discussed among peers, often in groups of people who bring their own lived experiences from different industries, cultures, and contexts into the classroom. And all this is done with the guidance of a skilled facilitator/lecturer. Students have to clearly and rigorously share their perspectives and viewpoints, aiding their growth in communication skills.
Cases often present ethical dilemmas, allowing students to grapple with complex ethical considerations that arise in organisational life (and usually touch on dilemmas emanating in the public, private, and civil society spheres). This helps students develop ethical reasoning. Cases, covering many aspects and disciplines of organisational life under one case (including historical and contemporary factors), also allow students to apply theoretical knowledge to practical solutions, like learning to think critically and sift out the useful knowledge from the abundance of information available. They help students understand decision-making under particular conditions, as well as the challenges and hurdles that one encounters in trying to do so. When case studies are also complemented by simulations, the practical learning is further enhanced. This helps them in their preparation for the complexities of organisational life post their studies.
CWC: What’s your approach to teaching with cases in the classroom?
KA: In my view, most important is the selection of relevant cases: it has to align with one’s learning objectives, with the focus areas of the session/lesson. Some of those cases can be old, but impactful, and some can be quite recent ones. I do not think that the age of the case matters as much as the relevancy of the case. Sometimes I will spend time introducing a case (background, information about the organisation or person, the key issues addressed by the case) and other times I let the students wade through such introductory notes and even search the internet for more information about the organisation or person. I do assign the case to the students before the class session – as I usually require them to individually read the case, and then discuss it in their groups before they come to the class session. This pre-class preparation is essential for a productive session. When students do not prepare, the class discussion is hampered (and other students feel cheated).
During the facilitated class discussion, I encourage the students to share their insights but also be open to critique and competing views. I tend to hold back answers and ask open-ended questions, and let the students range in their perspectives and ideas. The idea is to let them really think about many internal and external factors impacting the company or person in the case. I also encourage them to draw from as many academic disciplines as possible. They are encouraged to think creatively and consider multiple alternatives – sometimes communicating these ideas in class from their seat, and sometimes I get them to present as a group, in front of the class. For presentations, I let them prepare a few slides and a two-page brief. In the end, depending on what I am trying to achieve with a particular case, I may share my insights and perspectives as a kind of debrief. At other times, I will finish a session without actually sharing my own views.
CWC: Which case had the biggest impact on you as a business student?
KA: When I was a business student, the most impressive case was a local one that was relevant at the time: a proposed development on the side of the mountain in Oudekraal. The actual case involved property developers, lawyers, the courts, local government, the public, tourists, environmentalists, and land owners. In the case, we were addressing the actual issues that were ongoing in the courts at the time. The lecturer prepared a written case, and each group in the class had to go and interview the relevant group they were assigned to, hear their arguments, and then prepare a presentation for the class, but promoting the views of the group they interviewed. I still vividly remember that case to this day. Also, the Benihana restaurant case really got me to think about efficiency, cost factors, and customer experiences in a new way.
CWC: Any favourite cases that stand out for you in terms of leadership?
KA: Two cases that I co-wrote, “The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC): Powerless but accountable leadership for former GCEO”, and “The road less travelled: A Zimbabwean leadership dilemma”. The cases are quite contemporary and relevant in the issues they address, like patriarchy, gender issues, corruption, the role of history, spirituality in the workplace, Western vs. indigenous ways of working, leader power, communication, allies, and governance.
Read the cases
“The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC): Powerless but accountable leadership for former GCEO” by Maijang Mpherwane, Professor Kurt April, Claire Barnardo
“The road less travelled: A Zimbabwean leadership dilemma” by Patrick Cairns, Professor Kurt April, Sarah Boyd
Get the cases from Emerald.
