Dr. Gregory G. Dess
- Professor of Management
- Andrew R. Cecil Chair in Applied Ethics
The Hillcrest Foundation, founded by Mrs. W. W. Caruth, Sr., created the chair in October 1990. Dess filled the position in July 2002. The chair honors Dr. Andrew R. Cecil, Distinguished Scholar in Residence at UT Dallas, for 50 years of work in education and for his years of dedicated service at the Southwestern Legal Foundation and to the University. The chair supports an outstanding scholar who can perpetuate Dr. Cecil’s commitment to the examination and teaching of the basic principles of ethics.
“I’ve been here almost 10 years, and I’ve been extremely impressed by the growth of the Naveen Jindal School of Management and the University. Given the increasing stature of a global nature of UT Dallas, it’s really a tremendous honor to be so recognized by my peers and the administration.”
Dr. Gregory G. Dess is an internationally recognized expert on business management strategy. His primary research interests are strategic management, entrepreneurship and knowledge management. When he was a doctoral student at the University of Washington, strategic management piqued his interest because a key issue is discovering how firms create value.
“I find that very interesting because it becomes multidisciplinary, so I think it has an integrative nature with a lot of theoretical issues, but it still has a real strong bottom line – how can we create value for the organization as well as, hopefully, a social good for society,” he said.
This year, the Academy of Management Perspectives ranked Dess among the top 20 influential researchers in the field of management based on the publication’s study of scholarly impact. In 2008, the Journal of Management listed him among the top 50 scholars who have had the greatest impact on the field of management in the last quarter-century.
His influential paper on entrepreneurship that earned Dess the Academy of Management Award explores relationships between a firm’s entrepreneurial behavior and its performance by detailing how certain dimensions combine with business practices to create high performance. The paper has been cited in more than 2,700 papers and journal articles since it was published in the Academy of Management Review.
His career also includes being inducted as one of 33 charter members of the Academy of Management Journal’s Hall of Fame in 2000.
He has co-authored several books and published numerous articles in leading academic journals. He currently serves on several editorial boards including Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal and Strategic Management Journal.
Dess joined UT Dallas in 2002. He earned his bachelor of industrial and systems engineering degree from Georgia Tech, his master in business administration from George State University and his PhD in business administration from the University of Washington.