Marshall Young is a fellow at Saïd Business School and Green Templeton College, both at the University of Oxford. Young specialises in executive education and was previously Director of the School’s Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme.

Young’s interests lie in the development of senior executives at the top of their organisations. He is an expert in leadership development, executive coaching and the strategic development of organisations. Before joining Saїd Business School, he worked in consultancy and business development for large and small companies and brings this practical orientation to his work with executives at Saїd.

Young directed the internationally renowned Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme for 15 years.  This programme provides senior executives with a chance to stand back from the constant need for action, encounter new ideas and then move forward with a greater clarity of thought and vision. The programme is highly regarded and is now in its 30th year with alumni working in 67 countries.

Young directs and teaches on board level seminars and workshops for individual companies. He is also the founding Director of the Oxford Praxis Forum at Green Templeton College, a scheme which encourages senior executives to engage with the University. He continues to consult widely with companies on leadership and strategy development.

With a DPhil in Management Studies from New College, Oxford, Young initially focused on a career in the corporate world, gaining commercial experience with Scicon (a subsidiary of BP), CAV (now Lucas Industries) and the Boston Consulting Group. In 1979 he became a Director of the strategy consultants BKA. Later, he worked for Thorn EMI Home Electronics as Business Development Director and gained significant experience in the multimedia publishing and consumer electronics sectors.

He assumed his current role as Fellow in Strategic Management in 1995.  He served a term of office as Dean of Templeton College when it was responsible for Executive Education at Oxford, and was the founding Vice-Principal at Green Templeton College following the merger of Green and Templeton Colleges

Areas of expertise include:

- Executive education
- Leadership development and executive coaching
- Strategy development and negotiation
- Service sector, especially financial services and professional services

Much of Young’s research relates to exploring ways of fostering more productive levels of exchange between senior practitioners and research-led institutions. It builds on several ideas that suggest that traditional thinking about the relationship between theory and practice, and hence the role senior practitioners might play, is too limited and needs extending. It takes a broader view of both who should be involved in this relationship and how they should be involved if it is to be mutually beneficial.

Young’s earlier work focused on how the research output of the Universities can be made more accessible to senior practitioners. He was actively involved in securing and leading two major EU projects in this area.

The first, which commenced in 1998, investigated knowledge media management for senior executives. It studied what combinations of media – from print, through audio and video, to the internet – are most effective in serving this group of stakeholders. The project involved an international consortium including Oxford University Press and the Financial Times. The second project involved seven partners, six from continental Europe, and focused on the design and application of semantic web information structures and their possible use in communications with senior practitioners

The experience of working on these projects made clear to Young that there was another way in which Oxford could add value in its work with senior practitioners. By drawing on its strengths in education and innovation, Oxford could design a distinctive learning environment that ensured participants remained focused on the uncomfortable questions involved in learning about radical new ideas. In this way, the University could offer a valuable resource that would support practitioners as they look to tackle the rapidly expanding, complex and uncertain ecology of ideas they now face and the underlying “learning how to learn” this involves.

Young was able to use the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme as a vehicle for systematic experimentation over 15 years to explore which forms of learning environment are most effective and most valued when working with senior practitioners. This work has identified the importance of including both experiential, narrative based inputs alongside traditional analytical frameworks, of recognising both mythos and logos, in truly distinctive learning environments. This work laid the basis for the international reputation of the Strategic Leadership Programme. It has also provided a useful source of pedagogical ideas for other Executive Education programmes at Oxford.

Young reviews the results of this work in the forthcoming book ‘Beyond Leadership’.

Young’s work with senior practitioners has made it evident that universities need to be much clearer about how they can contribute to the understanding of two key challenges that practitioners face. These are the management of practice-led enquiry and the development and exercise of practical judgment. Young has taken the approach that these topics are best investigated using a collaborative effort involving senior practitioners. To facilitate this he has founded The Oxford Praxis Forum that is piloting a number of lines of enquiry. For example, he is working with senior executives to develop video profiles that capture rich accounts of difficult practical judgments they have had to make.

He is working with Professor Leslie Thiele of the University of Florida on a first paper to come out of this work entitled ‘Exemplary practice: The Narrative Dimension of Practical Judgment’

Research interests:

- Leadership development
- The role of practical judgment in strategic leadership
- Strategy development, negotiation and executive coaching
- Service sector, especially financial services and professional services

Young’s teaching centres on the theory and practice of strategic leadership.  The theory explores the nature of practice-led enquiry and practical judgment (phronesis) and their implications for senior practitioners.

This theoretical perspective informed the very practical issues involved in developing the pedagogy underpinning the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme for senior practitioners.  The programme is noted for its innovative use of arts-based learning and offers a broad range of study, reflection and networking options in subjects as diverse as performing arts, music, philosophy, philanthropy, theology, science and economics. Through Young’s innovative approach, the programme has nurtured the three pillars of strategic leadership: practice led enquiry, rhetoric and practical judgment.

Along with some senior practitioner alumni, Young is developing an elective on Strategic Leadership for the MBA and EMBA programmes that will be offered in 2013.

Young has also taught strategy and quantitative methods on the University MPhil and MBA programmes and examined candidates on MPhil, MBA and DPhil courses.

He also directs and teaches on board-level seminars and workshops for individual companies.

Much of Young’s activity at Saїd Business School is focused on engaging with senior business executives and their organisations. His combination of experience across business, teaching and executive development, places him in a unique position from which to engage with senior executives, as well as future leaders.

Young established the Oxford Praxis Forum at Green Templeton College to encourage senior executives to engage with the University. The Forum works with senior practitioners to explore how they might become involved with Oxford in ways that are mutually beneficial.

In 2005, Young set up the Oxford Leadership Prize. The competition is designed to encourage younger future leaders to communicate new ideas in a variety of formats. Open to University students, alumni, faculty and staff under 30, the competition attracts a strong field of candidates each year, and is judged by a high-profile panel of judges.

Young also established the Archbishop Tutu Fellowship programme in 2006, in conjunction with the African Leadership Institute. The initiative encourages corporate sponsors to fund 20 scholarships that allow young African leaders to attend teaching modules and training sessions in Africa and Oxford. The scheme receives a broad, pan-African set of competitive applications of very high quality.

Young also chairs the Committee at Green Templeton College that manages the disbursement of the income of a discretionary Trust set up by the Templeton Family to promote teaching and research in business at Oxford that also benefits the College. Young led the development of a rolling three-year programme for the deployment of these funds that is now supervised by the Committee. The programme currently funds seven D Phil Scholarships jointly with The Saïd Foundation, three Junior Research Fellowships (one jointly with the College), ten bursaries each year for students on a professional track at Said, a visitor programme for senior academics and practitioners in management and selected support for College led activities in business (e.g. a one week workshop on Entrepreneurship for 25 leading academics in the field in July 2012).