Business Strategy Expert Dr. Gregory Dess To Join U.T. Dallas’ School of Management

Dr. Gregory G. Dess, an internationally recognized expert on business management strategy, will join the faculty of the School of Management at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) this fall.

Artist’s rendition of the new Callier Center for Communication Disorders satellite facility Dess will become a full professor in the school’s organization, strategy and international management area and occupy the prestigious Andrew R. Cecil Endowed Chair.

“Greg Dess is an outstanding addition to a very talented group of faculty members in the School of Management, many of whom have achieved national and international recognition,” said Dean Dr. Hasan Pirkul. “We are both fortunate and delighted that he will join us. By recruiting the very best educators and researchers, and offering cutting-edge programs that are responsive to the needs of tomorrow’s industry, UTD will continue to deliver high-quality, high-value management education to its students.”

Most recently, Dess held the Carol Martin Gatton Endowed Chair in Leadership and Strategic Management at the University of Kentucky. For the past several years, he also served as a visiting professor of management at two foreign universities – the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Norwegian School of Management – as well as at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. In addition, he has been a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Oporto in Portugal.

Dess is co-author of the textbook, “Strategic Management.” He also recently co-authored two practitioner-oriented books entitled “Mission Critical: Avoiding Common Strategic Traps” and “Beyond Productivity: How Leading-Edge Companies Achieve Superior Performance by Leveraging Their Human Capital.”

His primary research interests are the areas of strategic management, entrepreneurship and knowledge management. He has published more than 30 refereed journal articles in such publications as Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly and Journal of Management. During his career, he has served on the editorial boards of a number of highly rated journals. He was recently inducted as one of the 33 charter members of the Academy of Management Journal’s Hall of Fame.

Dess received his Bachelor of Industrial and Systems Engineering degree from Georgia Tech, his M.B.A. degree from Georgia State University, and his Ph. D. degree in Business Administration from the University of Washington.

The endowed chair to which Dess has been appointed is named in honor of the late Dr. Andrew R. Cecil for his longstanding support of education and UTD. The chair is filled by an outstanding scholar who epitomizes Cecil’s commitment to the basic principles of ethics. Cecil, a past president of the Southwestern Legal Foundation and distinguished scholar in residence at UTD, is also remembered by the university in an annual lecture series which bears his name on the topic of ethical values in a free society.

The School of Management is UTD’s largest school in both students enrolled and semester credit hours earned. Its more than 4,300 students are enrolled in a wide array of innovative undergraduate-, masters- and doctoral-level degree programs, including one of the top distance-learning business education programs in the nation.

Enrollment in the School of Management has increased by 75 percent over the past five years, with doctoral enrollment doubling. During that same period, the school has hired more than 40 new full-time faculty members and funding for the school has more than doubled.