An Interview with Greg Wood
(“Int” refers to the interviewer, “Greg” refers to Greg Wood)
Int:	Greg I think one of the most challenging attributes to teach in the whole statement of graduate attributes, the Deakin Advantage based on a lot of what I've heard is really around the whole area of ethics and social responsibility. Now you teach a unit of that nature, I wonder whether you could outline the key aims and objectives or purposes of that unit.
Greg:	Dale, I'm always worried about teaching business ethics per say because I don't think you can. I think you give students a framework from which they can actually then operate themselves. I think the problem with trying to teach it, is I try to educate them to establish their own reality within the area. It's a very difficult thing to teach because of the interpersonal and very personal nature of what it is. In terms of the major aims of the unit, I guess it's really to develop an awareness that ethical issues are there in business life and are always going to be there, pick up any newspaper, listen to any broadcast, they're there and so students are aware of it because they're going to go into managerial careers. They may be accountants, they may be marketers, they may be lawyers, IT, whatever, economists, but they will at some stage in the not too distant future be managers and face many of these issues so I look at things like business policy formation, implementation, how management then takes those issues and establishes and formulates policy and implements that in respect to the ethics of the organisation and in some senses corporate governance and then also look at the impact on employees' rights and their obligations in the workplace and as we see all the time, we look at such issues as we're seeing now with James Hardy, there are also the customers involved and how those business decisions and managerial decisions impact on them. I guess what I'm trying to do as best one can because of the uniqueness of the unit and what each individual brings to it, is to develop their ability to critically analyse ethical issues which arise in business life and also to get them because I take a very international perspective because of my own business experience, to get them to understand that each culture doesn't view these issues exactly the same. Where we might see something like being nepotism in some cultures you're actually seen as being miscreant if you don't actually favour individuals within your own family grouping because there is no other support mechanisms to assist but if we did that in a job interview situation we'd be seen as contravening a number of laws of the land perhaps. So I try to take what the students have, try to develop it and to challenge them more than anything else. I say to my students there are no right or wrong answers in this unit and they immediately light up because they think this is fantastic but I say to them but there are a hell of a lot of ways I can sort of find that you haven't justified your opinions and so they sort of smirk at that and we get on with the course, but the body of knowledge is, whilst it's defined it's how each person interacts. It's not like accounting; you've either got the right number at the end or you don't. This is really much, a very, probably a more arts perspective too. A bit more softer in that sense and it requires a lot of interpersonal skills for those students to bring those various personalities out that they try and share with each other during class. So that's what I'm trying to do, get them to create their own reality for that particular broad base of information.
Int:	You haven't been teaching this unit overnight or from yesterday. You've been teaching the unit for a long period of time. You previously worked in industry, you've got a real interest and passion about the relevance and importance of this subject in the context of a commerce degree. Could you give us some insight into the things which have motivated you to get involved in teaching this area from your academic and previous industrial background?
Greg:	I guess, to put it in perspective with my own career I worked during the eighties for a major international energy and resources company. In those days they were petrol companies but now they're energy and resources and I was fortunate enough to open up one of their new regions of the world in the late 1980's and it took me into areas that had different perspectives on how one does business then we necessarily do. Certain business propositions were put to me that I found interesting and in some senses culturally unacceptable, but one had to be very careful about how one showed that amazement at some of the scenarios put to us and you had to be very careful that you didn't offend the people with whom you were guests in their country. You had to look at other ways of getting around it and I suppose that sparked my interest in the difference and the different philosophies about how one does business. Then having come back to Australia I left that particular organisation and moved to Warrnambool and got involved in education and finishing my Masters degree. I then decided I wanted to do PhD in Business ethics just seemed to be so appropriate with the crash of 1987–88 which I witnessed from afar because I'd been overseas at that time. The more I dealt with thinking about the issues and the more in depth I got, the more passionate I got about it because I have a certain set of values and views myself about how business should operate. So my PhD took six or seven years as they do part time because I know you'd be well aware of how an interesting saga and journey it is and as I came out of that I'd been teaching business ethics for probably since 95 and then suddenly I developed research partnerships with colleagues in Sweden and in Canada, so my works been replicated there so I've been very fortunate that I've been able to draw on my industrial experience and that commercial aspect I've been bringing to my teaching but I've also been very fortunate I've been able to study in the area extensively and to now publish internationally and so what I'm finding is all those issues meld together and one can draw on all of those experiences. So I inform my teaching with the research that I'm doing on an international level but also with the commercial experience I had internationally for this company which I must admit I think I learnt more in that period of time about myself and about what I perceive business to be and how it should be conducted than probably I had in the previous eight years or so working for that particular international organisation. Even though I worked in national training roles and commercial roles in the Northern Territory, this just opened up a whole new world of possibilities. I guess it was just, things just came together and I think you have to, you have to in this situation business ethics really think about what your value systems are and once you have hopefully got that in place you then go on to try and communicate that the best you possibly can to others. So I've been fortunate that the three areas have come together, my commercial experience, my teaching and my research, all based in form on doing this unit. I don't expect people to follow what I say in terms of this is the doctrine of the unit, as I said I want them to sort of come to that reality themselves and it's only how they will perceive the material. I try to make it as interactive as I can and challenge them really because you have to challenge people so that they get outside of their own comfort zones with some of these issues. So sometimes I take a politely adversarial approach and come with the other perspective, 'have you thought about this' and sometimes I try to generate debate amongst the students within the class to see the differences that exist amongst them and that can be quite surprising for them.
Int:	Now the unit started being taught at Warrnambool and it's been taught now at Burwood and it's going to be taught off campus so it's got an expanding role in the context of the management major in the whole commerce program, clearly centrally about the attribute of ethics and social responsibility in a business environment, but Greg how does it contribute to the development of other attributes in the Deakin Advantage?
Greg:	This has been an area that's interested me from probably the late 90s when I was the associate head of the school, of the Bowater School. I actually implemented it in my school before the University actually had taken it up what we wanted our Graduates to be. We were doing a whole range of things within the management major, of about eight subjects and I wasn't necessarily sure as the management coordinator that we were all necessarily working in the same direction so we did an audit and we checked it all out and as we started to develop our own schemata, the University placed it's own on top of it, so I suppose the ones that we fit into within business ethics in respect to the generic attributes are obviously the third year level, I'm after a good standard of oral and written communication and presentation. You have to have that in this unit because it's not a numeracy unit where you can stand alone on the numbers. It's not a unit where if your computer program works it works, this is basically one where you have to have that ability to articulate your position and to be able to write it effectively. We also look at to some degree teamwork and collaboration, we set assignments for students to work together and we do that in class as well. There's also particularly in this unit, the ability for critical thinking and analysis and problem solving, particularly critical thinking, you have to be able to as I use to be taught in one of my previous occupations with this energy and resources company, the ability we call the helicopter principle, to get yourself above the problem and just look at it as best you can in a non-emotive manner and so the helicopter principle is quite valuable I think. Obviously in an organisation, personal management skills and this as you do at any third year level I believe and one of the things I really have based the course on because of my belief that Australia needs to internationalise is this ability to look at international perspectives and competence in the global environment. The reason I have taken that is because many of the cases that we use within the course are international icon type cases. We look at Nestle, we look at the Challenger Space disaster, we look at the Exxon Valdez. Now, many of my students have not heard of these particular cases, this is new history to them, but what it does, it imbeds in them that these particular problems have been around for ten, twenty, thirty years and yet we're still seeing the same things revisited again. In one of the classic cases I use is the Johns Manville case of asbestosis and mesothelioma and of course as one can imagine with what's happening in the Australian market place at the moment this case will be even more pertinent now because students will see the same thing being revisited. Even though when you read the case it was suggested in 1AD that people who worked in the asbestos area, with those types of minerals, actually had real problems breathing and there were scenarios where in the 16th, 17th century Dutch academics who were involved in anatomy, found that people who worked in this area were basically their lungs were full of like a sand type material. In the 1840s and 50s in England they were suggesting only long term criminals could work in this particular industry. So when you see the older historical cases and you add the newness of today, what I hope my students see and in some cases can be slightly disillusioning for them is that the world hasn't moved a lot, that we may look good on the outside in respect to how we operate but in reality some of those underlining problems are still systemically there. So I try and get an international perspective, one in some cases to also get away from Australian companies, to make them look at world icons, so it takes it out of the personalisation of the Australian companies but I usually find they'll bring it back obviously to their local experience. I guess really we try and contribute in many ways to the Deakin attributes in the sense I think that we're actually, this unit really contributes to the student's being able to think independently and many of them like it because as I said their body of knowledge is quite fluid in the sense of how they interpret it. You know they don't have to have exactly the right answer, but they have to have the justification so it forces them to think in another intellectual level. I'm not saying they don't have to do that at other parts of the BCom because I'm sure they do, but this one's slightly different. There is no right or wrong answer.
Int:	I think you've read my mind in regard to when you think of business and you think of education, you think of the case study method and clearly, you know a key means of trying to develop those good attributes in students, good learning outcomes relates to the use of cases in your unit. What characterises a good case? What are you looking for Greg and how do you want students to engage with and learn from a good case?
Greg:	Dale, I think with case study methods being popular for many years, I know that they use it at Harvard, for example they use it in a different way to what we use it I guess, my understanding is that there's a bit more combative and adversarial doing case studies there, I don't want to be in that sort of scenario but I use them because they challenge students to think, they are a set body of knowledge, they can go away on all of my cases that I have chosen and find more in-depth opinions about those cases. They can see those cases from a whole number of perspectives, not just the perspective of the academic presenting the case or the academic who has written the case. They can go away and generate other forms of opinions and that's what I want them to do. I'm a great believer that educators should present both sides of any given story and therefore let the students make up their minds as to which one they see as being the more valid in the circumstances that are presented. So I find cases challenge students, they're a set body of knowledge, they are using only probably 4 to 6 or 8 pages, so they are not exhaustive but I found that with many of my students because of the nature of the cases I select and they are all fairly controversial and historically controversial students will then go to the next step and do their own independent research on it, come up with their own understanding of how it all works and that's really what I'm after. I mean if you can get your students to independently learn outside of the class experience and cases are great for that because they can look at these particular organisations and develop a greater insight and understanding. And if you can mange to motivate people to do that then you're actually half way to the education process being complete. So that's why I use them.
Int:	Now the unit will be multimodal, taught and learnt on and off campus, you've moved towards putting together a range of media in digital form as part of your package to be used by on and off campus students. What have been these digital resources that you've been working on, putting together?
Greg:	It's been fairly exhaustive, when you and I first talked about this probably over a year ago I guess we both had some understanding of what we thought was going to happen and what the possibilities were, you so more than me because of your expertise in the are but as I got into it I found that I was starting to get quite enthused by the possibilities that were there. I've always taught this unit in face to face teaching mode, since 1995 so I've been teaching it now for ten years and I've always had my own Power Point overheads that I actually developed with a textbook and binder, had the case studies that we've talked about which will all be uploaded. There's websites we can go to but I think for me the two most interesting additions to the program that students in all mediums will be able to see and in all ways of doing the course is basically in terms of the videos that I've use extensively at Warrnambool. I use a set of videos that actually go with the particular topic that's being discussed and also with the case study, they all fit in. For example, one of the videos we look at is, fits in with a case study on Joe Camel, the way that advertising was done in the US for the cigarettes and this video is fantastic and it fits in really well. But to add to that this time is the mention of that I haven't had the opportunity to do and that's to interview some extremely prominent academics and people from business. About ten of the topics that we've got on the course and those audio interviews have been anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes and they've ranged from things like corporate governance through corporate citizenship, the future of management and how that impacts on business ethics and business ethics impacts on it, so there's been a whole range of topics now that this suite of programs that can be delivered through the new technology which just broadens the unit so much that you can't do that sort of depth of knowledge just in a classroom, it's impossible. This new media ability is going to enable students to have lecture notes, case studies; they're going to have websites that will actually inform them even further, audio links, video, it's just a package that makes my job as an educator in some senses easier because there's a whole raft of resources that students can tap into and some may love the audio, some may love the video, some may learn in different ways so what it's given me is a greater suite of programs that can enable me to deliver the type of educational outcomes I think are appropriate. So for me it's been a fantastic learning experience and it's opened my mind to the possibilities and I've become enamoured with the technology in the short nine to ten months we've been talking about the possibilities and as an educator I remember many years ago, we would chalk and talk and the Power Point was pretty radical when I first started teaching it from it in 1996 in Warrnambool and some cases the technology didn't allow me to do so but now with the ability of what we've put together just for me is just in some senses a brave new world of education that I can tap into and update, and include, and add new things as the semester unfolds. So as a tool I'm excited to be able to use it, I only hope I can use it to the degree that it requires.
Int:	You've adopted a different way of thinking about crafting the study guide.
Greg:	Yeah, that's right.
Int:	It's not going to be in printed form, it's not going to be the standard number of pages and a standard printed reader. How have you gone about thinking and in the sense creating a different type of guide to study for the unit with all the media objects being embedded within it?
Greg:	In some senses it was a cultural shock for myself. I wrote the first Human Behaviour in Organisations study guide myself in 1991 and I would have thought it was probably two hundred plus pages, it was enormous and we literally in those days use to in some senses have a parallel textbook to the textbook. We'd explain the textbook in detail and that's when I was a much younger academic but doing this one it's probably only 35 pages, 40 pages on 12 topics so I even felt, that gee I better embellish this a bit more because I had this cultural perspective that am I short changing people by this particular lack of my intellectual input. I've justified that on the grounds that actually the audio, the videos, the cases and the lecture notes and the websites are all part of an intellectual input that I didn't have an opportunity to do back in 1991. So yeah it was really interesting, the first topic, 'The Good Life', I think I've probably written about 300 words on it but what I tried to do with it, instead of trying to explain the textbook, I make the assumption as my students are third year and have successfully negotiated through to this part of their academic career they don't need me to explain the obvious perhaps. So I prefer them to read the textbook, use my narrative within the study guide as more challenging them in certain areas to think about some of the issues that are presented in the book and then to use the other suite of resources as we've talked about and that they can go into themselves to develop and take what they require form that particular set of resources because everybody is going to learn differently and they're going to want different things from the unit so writing up a 35, 40 page unit outline has, sorry, a 35, 40 page study guide has been a little culturally been uncomfortable for me as well but I guess I'll only know the success or lack of success with it based on student feedback. But I think for too long we have recreated textbooks for textbooks and I just think that this particular suite of resources just enables us to do things that we've never been able to do in the past so I hope it works and we'll soon see in the next few months whether it does or it doesn't. Then I might have to go back and write more or perhaps I've written too much, I don't know.
Int:	You've spoken a lot about marshalling the prepackaged digital media, the resources. Greg, I guess in addition you've got the online teaching and learning system and the ability to communicate with students in a very dispersed environment now. What's your sense of what you've been able to achieve previously in regard to facilitating online communication and what you might be able to achieve in the future with a new system and new approach overall?
Greg:	In the past because I've taught this unit exclusively on campus at Warrnambool and it's been exclusively on campus at Burwood we've the human interface available all the time in terms of being able to lecture and to be involved in tutorials, because I take all the tutes in Warrnambool as well due to the numbers and so I've always had that ability to and my students have had the ability to have me on tap so I'm the person who stands out the front, if I'm asked a question synchronously right then and there, they ask me a question so we discuss it and move on. Going into the off campus mode through DSO and through the CD is going to be really interesting because I'm not going to be there, I'm going to be there more asynchronously then I have been in the past and that's going to create in itself a different sort of teaching methodology for me and a different way of handling it, but I can see this technology being nearly the same as being in a classroom because the student will have a whole suite of programs and resources that every other student has, just means we will be discussing it slightly in a different time period to scheduled lectures and tutorials. So I can see that the new online environment is just going to open a whole range of opportunities that weren't available to all of my students and the faculty have now gone into off campus has meant that there will be a greater range of individuals giving me input back into the particular subject that I teach and it can only be positive because as you know with off campus students they're usually a little older and a little more mature then my on campus and so they're going to bring a different range of perspectives too. I can only see this DSO and this CD interface just enhancing the entire unit because I'll have a greater range of students putting in a greater range of ideas and inputs into this particular topic.
Int:	You've indicated that you've been open minded …
Greg:	tried to be.
Int:	…and you've embraced a new approach Greg and the proof of the pudding will be in the eating and it will be an interesting year of finding out how it goes. Do you have a sense of the process you might work through in regard to the finding out how it goes and a sense of where it might go in the future or is all that open and let's see what happens?
Greg:	Dale, I think realistically I'm standing on the edge of a precipice in some cases, my toes are over the edge of the hill and sort of pressing backwards a bit because this is very different for me but the reason why I've gone down that track is I can see that it is a much richer environment for the students. Having said that in my understanding of off campus teaching I've done over many years, I'll find out very quickly whether this is working or not working because students will give me hopefully their honest feedback and in business ethics unit you expect them to be extremely honest with you in terms of feedback. So I expect that I'll look at what's happening from my own perspective, whether I feel comfortable with it, whether my colleagues feel comfortable with it and I've been very fortunate in Warrnambool that my students do give honest feedback and I'll know from them whether they're actually comfortable and I'm sure off campus students will do the same. To say that I have a program in place to assess it at this stage would not be necessarily completely correct, I have a, an ad hoc progress in my mind that I'm still playing with as to how I will do it, but I think that it needs to be incrementally done and, yeah we need to assess it, we've put a lot of time, a lot of us have put a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of resources into this program and I only hope that the way we've planned it to be received is actually the way it's received by the student cohort, but if it's not then we have to do something about it and readjust it that it actually bears more relevance to what the students require and need and feel can better help them with the subject matter. So I'm very open to how we look at it and how we assess it but it will in the next couple of months, probably between now and March and March to June, that particular period will take on a much greater significance where I will be checking the students about what they're feeling about it, how they like it, is it disengaging them or engaging them, all of those sorts of issues that we need to know because I said my main focus is for them to get as much as they can out of the three and a half months they spend doing the unit and if there are things within the program that are disadvantageous well then obviously we have to learn to perhaps revisit that and modify it accordingly but I don't have a grand plan about 'this is what we are going to do', I know those things will raise their head anyway because I'll force them into the public arena to be discussed.
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