Please wait while the transcript is being prepared...
0:00
Interviewer: Professor Van Lill, thank you very much for sparing the time today.
What I'd like to do as we are in
this series of interviews with deans of business schools is
to examine what the objectives of business schools are at the current time,
and very importantly, how, in management terms,
they're seeking to deliver on those objectives.
I notice that you describe yourself as a teacher at
heart and have a specialism in change and management development.
Perhaps to provide some context,
you could just describe the background and how you've come to
be the dean of business studies at your university.
Prof. Van Lill: Thank you Neil. First of all,
I think the brief was quite clear,
and so I'm looking forward to having a conversation with you.
My own background is, I was actually originally
specialized in food science and then I worked in factories across the world.
I was responsible for working with teams of biologists, geneticists,
production agencies, and eventually, at the end of the day,
how many per second came out in
the other side of the factory to different parts of the world.
So in essence, what we call today a value chain.
Then I got tired of traveling,
we wanted to settle down.
So then I applied for a position back at one of the universities here in South Africa
and I was under the impression that I'm being interviewed
to establish a new Department of Food Science.
In the course of the interview,
I actually realized, well,
this was 1994, and tourism is about to boom in South Africa,
