On entering the office of the new director of the University of Witwatersrand’s Graduate School of Business Administration in Parktown, Johannesburg, you can’t miss the blown-up cartoon-strip featuring the king of the Wizard of ID, who comments that he won’t be around when women live up to their expectations and reign over his kingdom.
He obviously had not heard of Professor Adele Thomas, who, in the Eighties, single-handedly took welfare in Johannesburg from paternalism into politics before setting her sights on the top position at what has been described as the premier training school for captains of industry in Africa.
In 1987, only seven months into the job, Thomas, then head of the Johannesburg Child Welfare Society, spoke out strongly against the detention of children, openly defied the Group Areas Act and generally tested pretentious axioms about social work and its role in society.
Born and raised in Johannesburg, Thomas enrolled at Wits University to study social work before graduating cum laude in 1977 with the top marks in her class. She later completed her master’s and doctorate degrees at Rand Afrikaans University.
Practical work as a student opened her eyes to conditions in the townships. She was always struck by the ‘poverty and pain, the tremendous social problems which were the basic norm — lack of education, inadequate housing facilities, poor social schemes, the breakdown of the extended family”.
Thomas ran a private practice, lectured at Wits, and pursued research into the causes and treatment of alcoholism.
In 1984 she was appointed assistant director of the South African National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence; the next year she was appointed director of the South African National Epilepsy League and she became executive director of the Johannesburg Child Welfare Society in 1986.
Thomas insisted that ‘social work had to become more relevant to the community we work in”.
Her drive to help accomplish that was noticed: in 1990 she was voted a finalist in the Junior Chamber of Commerce Award for Outstanding Young South Africans. She was also awarded a Hubert H Humphrey Fellowship for post-doctoral study at the School of Management of Boston University in the United States and, later, a visiting research fellowship at the university’s Institute for the Study of Economic Culture. In 2000 she received a Mellon Post-Graduate Mentoring award at Wits.
After that Thomas earned an MBA at Brunel University in London before becoming associate professor and director of academic programmes at Wits’s Graduate School of Business Administration, better known as the Wits Business School (WBS).
Her main activities as a senior lecturer at Wits included teaching human resources management on MBA courses and employment equity, employee diversity, organisational culture, business ethics, corporate governance and leadership to executive delegates on short courses and to students on the Executive Development Programme and in-company programmes.
Her work in the private sector has included the posts of director of diversity consulting at Alexander Forbes and director of corporate development at Grey Holdings.
Her writings include two books — Beyond Affirmative Action: Managing Diversity for Competitive Advantage in South Africa and Business School Education and the Development of Women Managers and Entrepreneurs.
And her cutting-edge style has not gone unnoticed in the rest of the world: in 2000 Thomas presented her case on The Challenges of Diversity for Educational Reform in Russia in Moscow.
Thomas’s studies now include collaborative research at the School of International Business of the University of New South Wales, Australia, which concerns individual and work values, work satisfaction, work behaviour and ethics among South African managers.
The first phase of the study, conducted in South Africa, was completed last month. A study is now being undertaken comparing Australia and South Africa. The results will be published in three international journals.
Thomas says university graduates should have ‘great social consciences” and employees’ well-being should be one of their priorities.
Her five-year strategy and vision for the school — Wits Business School: A Vision for 2008 — counts among the institution’s strengths a partnership with Harvard Business School; case-study teaching and writing; external recognition by the market, with more than 700 postgraduate students on campus at any time; and more than 40 public executive programmes plus several in-company programmes.
The school also delivers programmes in the rest of Africa and boasts exchange programmes with 40 top international business schools.
Thomas says one weakness is that there is little community outreach and social responsibility involvement. But she sees opportunities in the form of demand for its services that exceeds supply.
Her vision is for the WBS to be ‘the best business school in Africa and beyond, rooted in Africa with global credibility”.
This, Thomas explains, means a school where Africa’s business leaders learn to create African prosperity and where the world’s entrepreneurs learn how to do business in Africa.
Thomas hopes to attract more black African students, increasing the numbers from the current 22% to 30% by 2005. She also wants the number of women to rise from 24% to 35% by 2005.
What should be the hallmark of courses at the WBS? ‘Relevance for companies and South Africa,” is her immediate response. And that means a balance between practice and theory, marked by depth of academic content.
‘Six years ago students said they [only] wanted to make money — now they want to focus on and grasp issues such as corporate governance.”
As does Harvard Business School, Wits boasts a case study centre that focuses on subjects such as the Nedcor incentive scheme and the failure of companies like Leisurenet.
Because a Wits MBA is built on case-based studies, the classroom becomes a laboratory for students and the classrooms are deliberately formed to reflect South Africa’s diversity. ‘After all, diverse classrooms make better leaders,” Thomas said.