The School of Management has been part of the real success story of the University of Bath. It is consistently ranked in the top ten in the UK and is in the top 50 European business schools in the Financial Times rankings. With a recently appointed Vice Chancellor in Professor Ian White, the timing was right to capitalise on opportunities to build on the success of the School and deliver on an ambitious vision for its future growth.

For this role, it was critical that candidates were able to demonstrate how their leadership had led to progression for their School. Deputy, Vice or Assistant Deans who we considered for this role needed to show clear examples of how they have both understood the strategic issues at play in the highly competitive Business School sector and a track record of leading initiatives that have led to clear positive impact on their institutions, whether through a track record of raising income, driving up research quality, overseeing a rise in rankings or launching new and successful programmes. The new Dean of the School of Management would need to be credible from a research point of view in order to effectively lead and manage the academic faculty in the school.

Our UK partners approached potential candidates from business schools ranked in the top 100 in the UK, Europe and globally across North America, Australia and Asia. We were able to attract a strong international field of candidates from highly ranked business schools with at least double accreditation. The final shortlist of four candidates contained two international candidates (Australia and US), two UK based candidates. The appointed candidate was Professor Steve Brammer, who was previously the Executive Dean of Macquarie Business School. Professor Brammer had previously held senior leadership roles in Business Schools at the Universities of Birmingham and Warwick, having begun his academic career at the University of Bath.