Professor Prabhu Guptara
Professor Prabhu Guptara is Executive Director, Organisational Development, Wolfsberg (a subsidiary of UBS - one of the largest banks in the world). He is also Freeman of the City of London and of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, and Chartered Fellow of the of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development; he is also Fellow: of the Institute of Directors, of the Royal Commonwealth Society, and of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts Commerce and Manufactures; and he continues to supervise PhD research at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) as well as to be Visiting Professor at various Universities and Business Schools around the world.
Earlier roles include: a Governor of the Polytechnic of Central London, Member of the Council of the British Institute of Management, of the International Federation of Training & Development Organisations (IFTDO), of the Association for Management Education and Development (UK), of the South East Regional Council of the Confederation of British Industry.
Judge, 1988 National Training Awards, 1980 Commonwealth Poetry Prize, 1990 & 1991 Deo Gloria Prize for Fiction; Chair of the Panel of Judges, Deo Gloria Prize 1992 & 1993.
Experience with an enormous range of organisations including: Akzo Nobel (Netherlands), the Associated Banks Institute (Germany), Barclays Bank (UK), British Petroleum (UK), the Council of Europe, Cultor (Finland), Deutsche Bank (Germany), Groupe Bull (France), Federation of Finnish Engineers (Finland), the International Management Association of Japan, Kemira (Finland), Kraft Jakob Suchard (Switzerland), Leadership Academy (Finland), Nokia Telecommunications (Finland), Novo Nordisk (Denmark), Sedgwick International Insurance and Reinsurance Brokers (UK), Singapore Institute of Management, Sonatrach (Algeria), Sun Alliance (UK), UNCTAD, Valeo (France), and so on.
Organiser, chair and lecturer by invitation for numerous international conferences, he has contributed widely to radio and television in the UK and other countries (The Money Program, Any Questions) and has written for Financial Times (London, UK), The Guardian, The Times and other publications; articles, for example, in The Gower Handbook of Management, The Gower Handbook of Quality, and the International Encyclopedia of Business & Management (Routledge).
A CD-ROM has been issued of his lecture at the Professorenforum, University of Zurich, titled "Making the World Better - Why it does NOT happen...and what TO DO about it"
Further information available from rbadertscher@coba.ch
His best-known research publication is "Top Executives in the Global 100 Companies and their IT-Competence" (ADVANCE: Management Training Ltd., UK, and Wolfsberg Executive Development Centre, Switzerland, 1998); and he is included in Debrett's People of Today and in Who's Who in the World. Professor Prabhu Guptara lives in Switzerland.
Blogs by this Author
Why Is The West Declining?
- By Professor Prabhu Guptara
- Published 02/8/2011
This question is not often asked.When it is asked, the answer is usually framed in technical economic terms - forgetting that economc results come from a complex interaction between policies, technolo...
China's Unemployed Millions Of Graduates
- By Professor Prabhu Guptara
- Published 12/9/2010
According to a report in Bloomberg Businessweek, more than one-quarter of this year's 6.3 million college graduates in China are unemployed, despite shortages of workers in manufacturing. Why? Becasue...
Evil - How Defined? To Be Accepted Or Fought?
- By Professor Prabhu Guptara
- Published 09/9/2010
As I am preparing to give a lecture on this topic, and I have never earlier spoken or written on it, I thought I might post the outline to get the benefit of your thoughts:EVIL: How defined? To be Acc...
On The Second Anniversary of the Kandhamal Massacre
- By Professor Prabhu Guptara
- Published 08/28/2010
You may recollect that it is two years since the massacres took place in Orissa, India.Though the official figures do not add up, they do provide a picture of how little has been done in terms of just...
Historian And Scholar Harassed By Indian Authorities
- By Professor Prabhu Guptara
- Published 08/12/2010
A news release with the above title has come to my attention, which I include in its entirety below. Abuse of power by bureaucrats and politicians is a huge problem in India. My advice to Mr Nath is t...


"I am not completely convinced that "enough" is primarily related to contentment, philanthropy, spiritual, cultural, or economic factors. It seems to me that the concept of "enough" has several levels and that Abraham Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" serves as a good initial classification scheme . . . However, anyone with any experience of the world, or even the willingness to reflect on the news headlines each day, will be aware, for example, that parents are often willing to go without food so that their children can be fed (which violates Maslow's point about his most basic level): something "higher" drives them to abandon their "most basic" needs . . . . consider people who, for love, are even willing to give up their own lives.
The Guptara family starts with Professor Murli Manohar Guptara (died 1957), who changed his name to "Guptara", from "Gupt" or "Aggarwal" (the two usual surnames for our previous family, though these names have various spellings nowadays in English, since English is a non-phonetic language). He did this because he did not believe in caste (Gupt and Aggarwal are both caste-names). "Guptara" is a name with a meaning, from the original "Gupt" which, literally, means "hidden" and "Tara" which literally means "star". Thus, "hidden star". Professor M.M. Guptara was in reality a hidden star. As for the rest of us, history has yet to make a judgment . . . and while reading about Professor Prabhu Guptara, check out his beautiful poems!