SCOTLAND'S first centre for leadership in business has been launched by Napier University.
The university will also start its Women in Leadership project this week in collaboration with Scottish Enterprise. Based on the results of the project, it aims to launch a permanent programme by the end of the year.
Napier's Edinburgh Institute o
f Leadership and Management Practice is designed to tackle issues such as parochialism and a negative Scottish psyche which it said are holding back entrepreneurship.
Professor George Stonehouse said a worrying finding in a recent survey by Napier was that Robert the Bruce and William Wallace were named the top two Scottish leaders. He pointed out that as both are dead and largely mythological, there is a lack of inspiring present day leaders.
The institute, under director Grant MacKerron, will offer diploma and degree courses in management which are designed to develop better leaders in the private and public sector.
There are several such centres in England, but this is the first one north of the border.
Mike Fiszer, director of leadership development at the Edinburgh Institute, said: "There's too much focus on people who were once great, such as Wallace, rather than those who are now great.
"It may be part of the Celtic psyche but Ireland managed to tackle that to create the Celtic tiger. Scotland has to learn how to be a Celtic lion."
During a debate to mark the institute's launch, Graeme Hardie, director of Northpoint Consultancy Services and a former director at Abbey, said that one good effect of the credit crunch will be to develop more experienced managers.
Hardie said: "The credit crunch is spreading from financial services industry and more managers will have to learn how to work in difficult markets."
The full article contains 295 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
