Dr Ronnie Lessem was born in Southern Africa of Central European parentage. He is a political economist with an interest in Comparative Management, including the connections between culture and economics, psychology and management around the globe. A graduate of the University of Rhodesia, London School of Economics, Harvard Graduate Business School, and City University, he was a corporate planner and ran a chain of supermarkets before joining City University as faculty, and then the University of Buckingham, as Reader in International Management, and as Director of its Transformation Management programmes. He has also been adjunct professor at IMD in Switzerland, and at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. His books include Global Business (1987), Global Management Principles (1989), Total Quality Learning (1991), Business as a Learning Community (1993), European Management Systems (1993), Comparative Management (1995), The Southern African Businessphere (1996), Breakthroughs in European Innovations (1997), Management Development through Cultural Diversity (1998), and Management Education to Civic Reconstruction (1999). He is also a learning strategist for Anglian Water and Virgin Direct in the UK, is the co-founder of the Quaternity Foundation in Europe, and is a Director of Concorde Clothing, a family business in Zimbabwe.

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