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Professor Sir Cary Cooper CBE: A Pioneer in the Field of Organisational Psychology and Health in Business Schools: Conversations of a Lifelong Journey.

Introduction

Both prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequently, national wellbeing surveys from UK government agencies indicated that around 60% of all sickness absences from the workplace were for stress, anxiety and depression.

In response to these survey findings, Cary Cooper, acknowledged expert in wellbeing and workplace cultures, created (in 2018) and chairs the National Forum for Health and Wellbeing at Work. This is an employers’ organisation of over 55 employers (e.g., BP, Fujitsu Siemens, Microsoft, Shell, GSK, the UK Civil Service and the NHS). It is now the driving force that anchors his strident advocacy of the value of addressing mental health and wellbeing at work, and regarding workplace wellbeing and cultural change as a key strategic management issue.

Cary’s Evolution and Personal Development

What follows in this conversational essay is an insight into what motivates him and what “makes Cary tick” in his continuing passion for improving workplace experiences and shaping strong, responsible and cohesive management teams.

Cary began our conversation by talking about his background and birth in the United States.

He pointed out that his father and mother were both Eastern European Jews.

“My father was a Ukrainian and left Ukraine just before World War I. At that time, Ukraine as a country did not exist – it was just an area of Russia. My mother was a Romanian whose family left Romania for North America after the Germans invaded the country during World War I. My parents eventually settled (via Canada) in east Los Angeles – a destination for many East European Jews who were essentially from working-class backgrounds.”

“I was born on April 28, 1940, as a first-generation American. Subsequently, the family moved to West LA (Hollywood). I went to junior high school there and eventually moved to Fairfax High School, which was a very interesting school environment with about 95% of the pupils of Jewish origin. It was a very well-known high school with such alumni as movie stars Demi Moore, Phil Spector, Mickey Rooney and many more.”

Cary then commented on his high school experience, “I was quite good at maths, and have always been statistically oriented. However, I was also really interested in politics. I’ve always been reasonably political. A little bit left of centre – in British terms, a “Blairite Labour” type of guy. I did really well at school, and the teachers at Fairfax suggested that I should do a maths-oriented degree at UCLA, or one of the top universities in California. So I applied to UCLA, got in, and was scared to death because nobody in my family had gone to university. My university life was going to be ‘learning by doing’, I had no advice or guidance about what university would be like.”

“Following my lifelong interest, I started at UCLA as a political science undergraduate major. But, as you know, American universities have a four-year undergraduate degree. The first two years of which cover a variety of foundation subjects. Therefore, during my first year, I took the opportunity to be assessed at a psychometric assessment centre at UCLA, and their result was, ‘You’re great at maths, do a maths degree. Don’t do the social sciences, you’ll be dreadful at it.’ I was really upset by this, and thought that they knew what they were doing!”

“I then thought that maybe I should major in economics because it used statistics and mathematics in solving economic problems and business-related issues. So I shifted to a managerial economics specialisation in the business school at UCLA. During my undergraduate degree I took a course in psychology and met Professor Fred Massarik (an Eastern-European Jew from Austria), an expert on human behaviour and sensitivity training working throughout Europe and the UK.

“Fred saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. He stressed that I had to go on in academia and do a PhD. I confess that I didn’t have a clue what a PhD was! It was clear that Fred was acting as a mentor, but to no avail at that time. This was because following graduation I had to report for military service.”

The Intervention of Military Service and the Cuban Missile Crisis

“I opted to join the US Navy Air Force reserves, but did not apply for the officer route because it would require signing up for five years. I was an ordinary seaman, but showed no aptitude for aviation maintenance.”

“So, they decided to put me in naval air intelligence and sent me into a photographic intelligence training course near San Francisco. I learned a great deal about working with a range of diverse people, and how to cope with a crisis– as the Cuban missile crisis occurred during my time—which was a troubling and scary time.

“After leaving my military obligation, I decided to start an MBA at UCLA in which you did a range of business and general management courses in your first year (covering topics such as economics, marketing, operations, statistics, accounting, finance and law. I then chose to specialise in the behavioural sciences (focusing on psychology, sociology, social anthropology) in my final year.”

Fred Massarik was his inspiration and mentor during that period.

Cary described him as “He was just, just stellar.”

“I am proud to say that I funded my MBA and a lot of my undergraduate courses, through part-time work because my parents could not afford the tuition fees. One of those jobs was working for a lawyer, an ex-brother-in-law of mine, to serve subpoenas to people on behalf of his law firm and several other firms. However, perhaps the most life-changing experience for me was a summer job as a social worker for the Bureau of Public Assistance (i.e. social services) of the City of LA.”

“They gave me two jobs. One was in the Watts district in the predominantly Black area of South Central LA. I was the only white social worker in the department. The rest of the social workers were black or hispanic, because the community was overwhemingly ethnic and poor. I also had responsibility of the homeless in the centre of LA. My daily routine, balancing university work and life, was not the easiest. I’d go to UCLA classes in the morning, seeing most of my clients in the afternoon and evening. I’d then make it work by doing my homework in the late evening at the UCLA library, which was open until very late. I’d then start the next day with exactly the same schedule.”

Nevertheless, that experience and period of his life was the most profound thing that had ever happened to Cary. “To witness the deprivation. I saw people not coping and homeless people who had successful careers and then everything went south for them, often because of alcohol or drugs. I concluded that I couldn’t be like my Jewish friends whose parents wanted their kids to have a traditional profession (e.g. lawyer, accountant, doctor). I decided that I wanted to do something related to behavioural science and Fred, my mentor who had taught me organisational psychology in my MBA studies, thought so too.”

“While I had been contemplating doing a behavioural science-type PhD at Columbia University, Fred Massarik again influenced me significantly. ‘You know what? I want you to go to Europe first, and you’re going to go there!’ It turned out that Fred had been collaborating for some time with leading academics into an approach of group dynamics (i.e. T-groups) at Leeds University and the Tavistock Institute in the UK. And it just so happened that the head of Leeds Management School was visiting UCLA in the summer (following Cary’s graduation). Fred arranged for me to meet with him. He was an expert in T-Groups and group dynamics. He then invited me to visit Leeds for a year and work with his group. I thought to myself – I’ll do that.”

So, “the die had been cast.” The first step on his academic career pathway had been determined, namely social and organisational psychology research under Peter Smith at Leeds and the mentorship of Massarik from afar, at UCLA.

An Academic in Leeds, Yorkshire in the UK

Cary’s initial understanding was that he would be working at Leeds for one year.

However, during this period Leeds offered Cary a fully-funded research grant to study for a PhD. Cary accepted the offer and Peter Smith was appointed as his PhD research supervisor.

Cary’s words, “I worked with Peter for 2 years in Leeds, and then moved to the University of Sussex with him (he had been appointed as a senior lecturer of social psychology at Sussex). Peter continued to supervise me at Sussex during my final PhD research year. Following my thesis examination, I was awarded a Leeds PhD, since I had spent more research time at Leeds than Sussex. Peter turned out to be a truly, truly wonderful friend of mine and another great mentor who still keeps in touch with me, to this day. Whilst at Sussex I met Maria Jahoda a world-class social psychologist, who had lectured at Columbia and was an Eastern European Jew as well. She valued my work and recommended me to Southampton University as they were trying to recruit “good young social psychologists.”

“I was subsequently appointed as a lecturer in social psychology at the Department of Psychology at Southampton University. The only drawback was that their psychology facility focused primarily on experimental psychology, i.e. analysing the behaviour patterns of animals, rodents, etc., and on parts of the human body (e.g. perception, stimulus response theory, etc.). However, there was a well-known, first-rate senior lecturer at Southampton in educational psychology who mentored me, as we were the only psychologists in the department with a research focus on human behaviour. This was good for me, as it allowed me to focus on research and publications (a key activity for any young, early-career academic).”

“While this was a productive research period, the fit between my research interests and those of the department was not what I needed. Indeed, Peter Robinson, my Southampton mentor, called me into his office and said, “Cary, being in an experimental psychology department is not a good fit for you. Your laboratory is really about ‘real life’ organisations and institutions. Your laboratory is about people in the workplace. The intellectual workplace is in the public sector, the private sector or the third sector – such as charities and NGOs.” Quite soon thereafter, Cary got a phone call from Professor Sir Roland Smith, who had a strong Mancunian accent, and was then head of the department of management sciences at UMIST (the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology). Soon Cary was invited to visit Manchester and consider an appointment (possibly a Chair) in the Department of Management Sciences in psychology and organisational behaviour.

Cary said, “At that point I was 32 years of age, with five to six years at Southampton and three years at Leeds and Sussex. I accepted his invitation to visit UMIST, but when I arrived, Professor Smith had organised an interview panel for a senior lectureship, conducted by a large panel of professors from the University of Manchester and UMIST. Roland was a very pro-active person who wanted me to come, so without telling me, I found myself in an interview panel! I was offered and accepted a senior lectureship in organisational psychology (in the Department of Management Sciences). I joined UMIST in 1974.”

“About a year later, with the funding that Professor Smith had received from the UK Foundation for Management Education (FME). I was offered and accepted the FME chair in management education. Roughly a year later, this chair was renamed a Professorship of Organisational Psychology at UMIST. From that moment forward, Roland Smith mentored me in all my career options and became my role model and surrogate father figure.

Building a Brand New Department at UMIST

This clearly was the second substantive building block in Cary’s career, namely, establishing UMIST as a leading management school in the UK. He and his other professorial colleagues were tasked with turning the Department of Management Sciences into the Manchester School of Management. At the same time, he was focusing on making the school into a significant player in the field of organisational behaviour. Faculty hiring was the priority for UMIST in this period (1974/5–1980). The strategic priority was to hire promising faculty, given both the growing trajectory in management education in the UK and Cary’s specialist area of organisational psychology and health.

Cary noted that “When I arrived in 1974, I was one of only three academics in the group in organisational psychology. By 1980, we had ten lecturers and senior lecturers, as well as Ivan Robertson, a well-known professor in assessment and selection. I was also Head of the Department of Management Sciences for 3 years during that period. It was a time of fast growth, and everything was going great. It was then punctuated by a period of personal separation and divorce, and the growth of a new personal relationship and marriage in the early 1980s.”

1980: A period of personal reflection

Cary reflected on this personal transformational period and its implications. He confessed that “while I’m not a ‘workaholic’, I believe that at the beginning of my career I worked very hard and had some workaholic tendencies. It was because I was a working-class kid who became a professor in his 30s, and I felt that I had to work very hard to meet other people’s expectations.”

“My work behaviour was a version of imposter syndrome, and I believe that my hard work affected my marriage, and also my family. I realised the ‘second time around’ that my work life would need to alter and receive more careful attention.”

Cary also confessed that he loved academic life and felt that luck – and significant mentorship from Fred Massarik, Peter Smith, Peter Robinson and especially Roland Smith – had provided him with a series of springboard opportunities throughout his career.

Reflections on his UMIST career

We asked Cary to reflect on the following aspects of his career, being not only a very good academic, but also a communicator, an engaging speaker, a prolific writer, an able translator of research in behavioural science and organisational psychology, and noted as one of the leading thought leaders in Human Resource Management, according to HR Magazine.

Cary replied modestly that he thanked us for identifying the “career highlights” we had summarised. He pointed out that other highlights worth noting were his founding in 1989 of the British Academy of Management; founding the UMIST health and wellbeing consultancy (Robertson Cooper Ltd); and his Presidency of CIPD (the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development).

We agreed and added that because of his exuberance, enthusiasm and warmth – and also his personality – he had also written and hosted programmes such as “How to Survive from 9 to 5” for Channel 4 TV in the UK, and had served as Chair of the Business and Management Studies cluster in the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) commissioned by the UK government. And to top it all, he became a British citizen in 1993.

A Career Turning Point – PVC for External Relations at UMIST

Around this time, Roy Payne, a well-known and respected organisational behaviour scholar, had persuaded the Vice-Chancellor at Sheffield, Professor Sir Gareth Roberts, to approach Cary and offer him the post of Dean (Head) of the Sheffield Business School – with the promise that he would also promote Cary to a Pro Vice-Chancellor role at Sheffield in due course. It turned out that the then Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Sheffield, Bob Boucher, at about the same time, had already been offered the Vice-Chancellor’s (VC) job at UMIST.

Thus, at UMIST, Bob (then VC) privately contacted Cary and said, bluntly and clearly,

“You’re not going to Sheffield – or anywhere else – for a PVC role. I am going to make you a Pro Vice-Chancellor at UMIST.”

Cary accepted the offer, saying:

“As External Relations PVC, I can work with the media, with business, with other business schools/universities and things like that, which is what I like to do. And I could still be doing research and not be a career administrative type of PVC.”

Cary further indicated that Gareth Roberts was initially very upset, but over time, Gareth, Bob and Cary became really close personal friends. He described Sir Gareth as a “Great Welshman, a brilliant academic and a lovely guy.”

Cary mentioned that whilst his PVC role at UMIST allowed him to expand his professional and educational career, “I was asked to chair two government sponsored research assessment exercises in the field of business and management studies and chair commissions on human resource (HR) issues for government and business bodies (e.g. CBI) on HR related to bullying at work, governance and management. My public sector work also brought me closer to the UK Government Cabinet Office and other bodies.”

As a result of Cary’s extensive work for academia, government and businesses, Cary was awarded the honour of CBE (Commander of the British Empire) – a rare honour for a psychologist in 2001.

By that stage, Cary was also one of the two Deputy Vice-Chancellors (DVCs). The VC, Bob Boucher, had just announced that he would be leaving UMIST and returning to Sheffield as Vice-Chancellor. At the same time, proposals had been made to merge UMIST with the University of Manchester – a proposal that was strongly endorsed by the other DVC, who did not want to advertise the vacant VC post at UMIST because he was in favour of merging UMIST with the University of Manchester.

Cary disagreed with his DVC colleague and said clearly at the time, “‘We can’t merge unless we ask our staff whether they want to merge. We must at least get them involved in the process’. This did not really happen.”

The departing VC couldn’t get involved either. However, some of the senior leadership at UMIST were largely opposed to the idea. Following sound HR practice, they asked the union to call a vote of every union member in UMIST. A substantial majority of members voted not to merge – but the merger still happened.

A Further Career Change: PVC role at Lancaster

He recalled, “I got a phone call from Sue Cox, the Dean of Lancaster University Management School, who asked me to lunch to discuss moving to LUMS. She was an outstanding dean and colleague, so I was interested in the move. I then got a call from the VC at Lancaster, who invited me to join them and become the PVC for External Relations at Lancaster. He was an extremely kind and wonderful person who came from an English and Australian background. I decided to join Lancaster in 2004, after 30 years at UMIST during which the mentorship of Professor Roland Smith, who treated me like a son, provided me with advice on how to run a successful management school and apply all that I had learned about HRM and workforce relations to shape and enhance quality management education.”

Cary reflected on his more recent involvement in important initiatives that required a much broader advisory role in policy formulation. For example, such an opportunity arose when, “I was asked by a very senior civil servant to create a think tank in what was titled the Sunningdale Institute. At that time, the Cabinet Secretary of the UK Government approached me to bring the Sunningdale Institute into the Cabinet Office (later to be in the National School of Government) with the remit to provide advice and support to Permanent Secretaries, DGs and junior Ministers to deliver better public services with greater speed and efficiency. I then set about developing a group of advisers from the leading business schools to provide this service to improve the efficiency of government departments.

He then outlined the next steps, “I persuaded the best people in the UK (including Howard, one of the authors) together with colleagues from other leading overseas schools, such as the Kennedy School at Harvard. We ran joint seminars, wrote policy reports and debated their implementation and impact in government. It was an extremely useful and successful vehicle for policy formulation and helping senior civil servants and ministers to deal with critical issues as they emerged.”

Cary added that, “I also moved to build initiatives via the Academy of Social Sciences (ACSS, as Chairman) to apply the social sciences in policy.” To ensure that this focus was clarified, Cary went one step further, “At the same time, I became involved in more mental health and wellbeing initiatives in society as one of the 12 ambassadors of the Samaritans. Indeed, my professorship at LUMS was in organisational psychology and health, which was broad enough to allow me to publish in management, psychology and health journals. This enabled me to explore the linkages between health, wellbeing and individuals’ experiences in their work and work cultures, in attempting to build enjoyable, efficient and productive workplace environments.”

In recognition of these wide-ranging and successful activities, in 2014 Cary was awarded the title of KBE (Knight of the British Empire). This happened because, at least from our perspective, Cary still has the relentless enthusiasm and passion for his work, which continues to this day.

Therefore, we asked him to reflect not only on his more recent work but also on the key issues in this field, particularly in management education, that have occurred recently and outline what initiatives and strategies he believes will be important in the future.

Reflections on Business Schools in the Global Financial Crisis and throughout COVID

Cary started his reflections by commenting on the environment in the last two decades. He said:

“I think that there were two main turning (inflection) points in the last couple of decades. One was between 2008 and 2012, the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), when so many people lost their jobs. Then the COVID pandemic. I think that the financial crisis had a profound effect, as so many people were feeling so insecure. The whole finance sector was in turmoil, and some banks were collapsing. I think that had a major impact. To some, it felt like a 1929-style depression.”

“So, from my viewpoint, the GFC and the COVID-19 pandemic were two quite profound events (with Brexit in the UK also a significant issue). I think it made people think about their work lives and what it was doing to them. For me, COVID was just different. I was now working from home, and it made me wonder why, over all those past years, I had to come to the university every day.”

“So, from a work point of view, it changed me, but I think it changed everybody. It made us more reflective about life, and we wondered why we tolerated 60-hour weeks in the workplace. Indeed, we now had a better balance between working at home and taking some time off during the day.”

“So post-2020, I was working at home, but still working hard. It was clear that we would pivot to a hybrid model, where people could work more flexibly. Some may prefer working physically in the office full-time, others, part-time in the office, perhaps choosing to work from home, say 3 days a week. The main issue with hybrid models is that you need line managers who have good EQ and social skills.”

“Indeed, I remember when the National Forum for Health and Wellbeing (a national business/employer forum anchored by Cary) first met in 2017. I asked the participants, ‘If you were to do one thing to increase the health and wellbeing of people in the workplace, what would you do?’ And virtually all, in different ways, answered, ‘it would start with the line manager from the shop floor to the top floor, all the way up the system. I would make sure we had people with a good EQ’.”

“Now I think 2020 means for me the advent of new styles of leadership. Real leadership in the workplace – all the way from a foreman on the shop floor to the CEO – has to be a different kind of person. We also have to create a different kind of climate in the workplace. If we had more socially skilled managers, maybe they’d make work a bit more fun, a bit more relaxed and enjoyable.”

Cary went on to discuss the nature and importance of achieving the right kind of leadership for the workplace environment, particularly following the profound effects of the GFC, the Covid pandemic and perhaps also the Brexit vote.

Cary stated clearly again that, “I was viewing leadership primarily from an organisational point of view. I think the good news from the upheavals of the GFC, the COVID-19 pandemic and Brexit, is that the younger generations (such as Gen Z and the Millennials) are not prepared to tolerate bureaucratic, centralised leadership environments in organisations, often described as ‘command and control’ leadership structures. From my perspective, if you want to retain the support of the upcoming generations, there’s only one thing you can do, and that is to get the right people into line management roles. Create the right kind of workplace culture so that you can retain them – because you look after their welfare, value them, trust them, and work flexibly with them. The key drivers of strong cultures are both attracting talented employees and treating them well so that you can retain them.”

Indeed, Cary spoke further about this, “My National Forum for Health and Wellbeing” (with 55 or so members from leading UK organisations) highlighted the need to change organisational culture and ask questions such as:

• Who are the managers we need?
• What are the people we need?
• How do we change the culture?

I suggest there is not one right answer. But every manager is a ‘culture’ – in a way, a subculture.

So if you get enough of them, and you get the right kind of people, you are just creating the culture from the ‘bottom up’, with a very ‘light-touch’ form of senior leadership collaboration, and wellbeing for leaders is about thinking strategically, it’s about culture change.”

“Also, in order to attract high potential line managers, it is important to do regular wellbeing audits (and opinion surveys) about how they are performing and their views on issues such as hybrid working. However, since every organisation is different, it must examine a range of metrics to assess important issues such as job satisfaction, labour turnover, etc. They need all these metrics – some of which are subjective, such as staff perceptions of senior management – while others, like stress-related ill-health (the leading cause of long-term sickness), are more objective. My National Forum is now reporting on the structure of performance metrics for employee wellbeing. Such a reporting structure is now a board issue for CEOs too. I am clear that the strength of membership in our National Forum will provide welcome guidelines for workplace culture change and its measurement, as well as continuing to offer long-term advice on organisational culture, wellbeing and change.”

The National Forum is clearly a major element in Cary’s continuing challenge to generate improvements in organisational health and wellbeing in fast-changing organisational environments.

The Value of Business Schools

Next, we asked Cary to comment specifically on management education, including such topics as curricula in business schools and how they have changed following the GFC, the Covid pandemic, and Brexit.

Cary responded by saying, “Frankly, we haven’t changed very much at all – except at the margins. We teach mainly ‘cognitive input’, just like the rest of the university. We don’t train our students on how to manage people. We teach all the basic cognitive, analytical aspects of business, such as accounting, economics, finance, law, operations, marketing, etc. When they graduate, either at the undergraduate or MBA/PhD postgraduate level, we don’t really train them to manage human beings! Curriculum change over the last two decades has been beset by complacency and inertia. Until Covid hit, business schools were ‘technology lite’. There was little or no adoption of online learning or modern data analytics and the study of digital models in business contexts. And solely because of this pressure, we began to adopt models of ‘working from home’, online lectures/tutorials and hybrid working.”

Further, Cary said, “To understand how business schools operate, we have to look at our own university institutions. Frankly, the main driver for being a successful academic is to produce strong, theory-oriented research papers. The currency of the realm is maximising the citations count in Google citations, Clarivate and ResearchGate. Research determines status.

Teaching is not considered as important in relation to academic status in universities.”

“I feel we need different types of people in business schools. We need to be more innovative in our coursework, and we need to give people promotions based on their contribution to the three main areas of teaching, research, and citizenship (or service). By the way, perhaps a fourth one – which I think is really important – is entrepreneurship (creating a bit of an entrepreneurial edge). Why don’t we have many more spin-off companies from business schools?”

“Believe it or not, I was the first management academic in UMIST to generate a spin-off business – Robertson Cooper. And there have been relatively few emanating from other leading UK business schools.”

“The problem is that universities are very hierarchical, very well-structured organisations that plan your career path and everything else. The key point about a business school should be: What impact do they make on society?”

Cary elaborated, “I would argue that first-rate, inspirational teaching is impactful for their students. Teaching is very important, impactful research is also important. But do these theoretical research papers have a practical impact on society? It could certainly be argued that research in top applied business schools and journals (such as Harvard Business Review) may be immensely more valuable to business or public sector organisations. And, entrepreneurs can then see more clearly how their ideas can be translated into new products and services, and organisations that generate meaningful growth for society. My key point here is that business school academics need to teach and inspire students and chart new theoretical or applied research that can increase our capacity for social and much-needed economic growth.”