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Picture: Supplied
Picture: Supplied

Is Stellenbosch Business School’s see-saw flirtation with foreign leadership at an end, or just in abeyance? After two UK directors resigned well before their contracts expired, Prof Chris van der Hoven has been appointed to return home-grown direction to the institution.

Van der Hoven, who became director on January 1, succeeds Prof Mark Smith, who quit in September 2023 after less than three years in the job. He blamed his departure on problems with obtaining visas for his family to join him, but some staff say there was also internal discontent about strategy.

A decade earlier, in 2013, Prof John Powell returned prematurely to the UK after a similar period. He and Smith were supposed to stay five years. South African academic Prof Piet Naudé, who was director between their “visits”, did just that.

After Smith left, Ghanaian Prof Charles Adjasi, a long-standing member of the school’s faculty, was appointed acting director. The school is part of Stellenbosch University.

Van der Hoven, 62, bridges the local-international divide. Born and educated in South Africa, he spent 12 years teaching at the UK’s Cranfield School of Management and three years as a senior fellow at Cambridge University.

Returning to South Africa, he was academic director for two years at Wits Business School. From 2018 until the end of 2024, he was CEO of Stellenbosch Business School’s executive development arm, SBS-ED. This provides bespoke training programmes for managers and executives of corporate clients.

This was Van der Hoven’s third bid to be director. He lost out first to Naudé and then Smith. He believes the wait, and particularly his extended spell in charge of SBS-ED, has given him a greater understanding of both the school and university.

His vision as director, he says, is simple: to make Stellenbosch graduates and executive education students “the most sought-after in South Africa”. The school wants them to not only fill “an absolute vacuum of leadership in South Africa” but also to rise to any challenge in an increasingly unpredictable world.

Many South African students, he says, expect to be spoon-fed solutions. “We want ours to stand up where others would back down.”

Employers should not need to provide additional training, he says. “That means we’re not doing our job.” 

The school is one of only three South Africa-based institutions to boast the “triple crown” seal of approval from international business education accreditation agencies in the UK, US and Europe.

Van der Hoven says being part of a university with a strong academic reputation is another advantage. The town of Stellenbosch is internationally known as an iconic destination offering students “a unique academic flavour”.

Unfortunately, it’s a flavour business school students can’t taste. The school is situated in the northern Cape Town suburb of Bellville. For years, there has been talk of moving to Stellenbosch. By some early forecasts, the school should have been ready this year.

Though land has been donated and the university has committed to the project, there is no visible progress so far. Van der Hoven says a design competition for the new campus will be held this year. So when will it be built? “All I can say is that I will be very disappointed if it doesn’t happen during my tenure.”

We want our students to stand up where others back down
Chris van der Hoven

At SBS-ED, he was responsible for a major source of business school revenue. The company is a stand-alone entity, nominally independent but responsible to the school and university. It earns many millions of rand annually from the provision of executive programmes. Any surplus goes to the business school, allowing it to cover special costs such as the employment of foreign academics and lecturers.

After outside criticism from people who say universities should not be running moneymaking enterprises, there was talk in the past of SBS-ED being disbanded and its operations coming under direct control of the university.

Some other universities, jealous of the money they see being generated by their own business schools, can’t wait to get their hands on it. Some have even taken executive education provision away from schools and given it to other, less qualified departments to ensure direct ownership of revenue.

Van der Hoven says such a move is unlikely at Stellenbosch, where SBS-ED provides a steady stream of income — about 75% from South Africa and 25% from the rest of Africa — to support the school and reduce the financial burden on the university. “It works. Why change it?” he asks.

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