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Prof Peter Rosseel delivers guest lecture during UFS visit

13 August 2024 | Story Anthony Mthembu | Photo Sibahle Dayimani and Amandla Kulu

The Business School at the University of the Free State (UFS) hosted Prof Peter Rosseel, Managing Director of Management Consulting and Research – a spin-off of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium – for a guest lecture during his visit to the UFS Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences (EMS).

The guest lecture took place on 19 July 2024 in the Business School Auditorium and was attended by academics from the UFS.

Reflecting on the lecture

The lecture presented by Prof Rosseel focused on how combining strategy, strategy implementation, culture transformation, leadership, and learning successfully leads to sustainable growth, creates engagement, and delivers tangible results. Throughout the lecture, Prof Rosseel spoke about how experts tend to make bad leaders and therefore stop change from happening within an organisation. In fact, he highlighted that, “Experts stop change from happening within the workplace because experts, by definition, look through the eyes of their expertise, but you cannot reduce the world to different forms of expertise, as it is holistic.” As such, he argued that to change an organisation, one must see things from the point of view of others.

Furthermore, Prof Rosseel delved deeper into the hierarchical operating model within organisations. He indicated that the above model should be one community within organisations; however, unfortunately it is not. This is because organisations are made up of several departments such as finance and human resources. As such, he regards these departments to be silos that could prove to be detrimental to organisations, as each silo can create its own culture as opposed to an organisational culture. These are some of the points he discussed throughout the lecture.

After the lecture concluded, the audience had the opportunity to engage with Prof Rosseel on his viewpoints. In fact, Lyle Markham, Academic Head of Department and Lecturer in Industrial Psychology at the UFS, was one of the audience members and described the lecture as insightful.

News Archive

Centenary celebrations of Faculty of Law reach a highlight

2009-11-19

At the occasion were, from the left: the Honourable Judge Ian van der Merwe; the Honorable Judge Faan Hancke; former Judge of Appeal Joos Hefer; and Prof. Johan Henning, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the UFS.
Photo: Stephen Collett

The Faculty of Law at the University of the Free State (UFS) reached the highlight of its celebrations of a century of excellence in legal education, training and research under the theme “Iurisprudentia 100” at a gala dinner held on the Main Campus in Bloemfontein last week.

At this spectacular occasion Prof. Johan Henning, Dean of the Faculty handed a Cum Laude award to Judge Faan Hancke, Chairperson of the UFS Council and Extraordinary Professor in the Department of Law of Procedure and Law of Evidence. Judge Hancke is the fourth recipient of this award. Judge Hancke received the award for his excellent contributions towards the building of the Faculty of Law and the UFS.

According to Prof. Henning the faculty has a distinguished history of excellence in theoretical as well as practical education and training, which can be traced as far back as to the establishment of the Grey University College in 1904. During this modest beginning the seed was planted for the establishment of the Faculty of Law, which gained momentum when Bloemfontein became the judicial capital of South Africa in 1910.

Other highlights in legal education at the UFS include, amongst others, 1909 when Adv. Percy Fisher, a BA LLB graduate from the University of Cambridge became the first law lecturer to receive a permanent appointment. In 1918 the first LLB degrees were awarded to SP le Roux, later Minister of Agriculture, CR Swart, later Minister of Justice, Governor-General, State President and the first Chancellor of the UFS, and Walther Leinberger, an attorney in town.

In 1945 Law became an independent faculty and in 1948 the first full-time professor, Dr JP Verloren van Themaat was appointed. After Prof. Van Themaat, six deans followed before the appointment of Prof. Henning.

Over the last ten years the faculty has managed to build many international contacts with international leaders in the legal arena, including the Universities of London, Cambridge, Sussex, Tilburg, Kentucky, Heidelberg, Freiburg, Utrecht and Deacon.

The faculty prides itself on the fact that he has prepared many students as well as lecturers who later became presidents, ministers, administrators, judges of appeal, judges and rectors. The faculty has 95 staff members and 2 400 students, of which 1 800 are postgraduate students.

National as well as international leaders in the legal field congratulated the faculty on its 100-year celebrations. Messages of congratulations were also received from, amongst others, universities, legal practices and the government.

Media release
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Deputy Director: Media Liaison
Tel: 051 401 2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: loaderl.stg@ufs.ac.za
18 November 2009

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