University of Surrey awards honorary doctorate to Arie de Geus
Wednesday 25 June 2008
The University of Surrey is proud to confer the honorary degree of Doctor of the University to Arie de Geus for services to management. The award was made on Thursday, June 19 at Guildford Cathedral.
In 1951 Arie de Geus, while studying for his doctorate in Business Administration at the Nederlandse Economische Hoogeschool (later Erasmus University) in Rotterdam, joined Shell as a cost-accountant to support himself during his studies. Following his graduation he stayed on at Shell and remained with the company for 38 years, working in Holland, Turkey, Belgium and Brazil, before returning to the UK as Regional Coordinator for Africa and South-Asia in 1979. In the fullness of time he was appointed Group Planning Coordinator in which position he stayed until his retirement in 1989.
He is the originator of many of the principles and practises underlying the ‘Learning Organization’ concept. As the former head of strategic planning for Royal Dutch Shell, Arie de Geus’s profound insight, which in the 21st century has become received wisdom, was that the answer to the conundrum of corporate longevity lies more in people and their learning than in financial assets.
Arie spent several years as head of an advisory group to the World Bank, as an advisor to the Office of the Auditor General in Canada and to the Dutch Ministry of Transport and Communications and as a Visiting Fellow at London Business School.
He is one of the founders of the Society of Organizational Learning (SOL) and is President of SOL UK, an organization which has strong links with the University of Surrey’s School of Management.
Arie de Geus is Officer, the Order of Oranje-Nassau (appointed by the Queen of the Netherlands, 1988) and was Co-Chairman, Netherlands-British Chamber of Commerce, 1981 – 1988.
