DESTROYED IN COURT
0458 TRIBUNAL - DAMAGES TO THE OU AND TO MY LIFE
[The final section of my submission]
My first allegiance was always to the OU, but over recent years the behaviour of OUBS management has forced me to question even this. In particular, in the face of the traditional OU culture to which I remain committed, OUBS management has – against my public advice – consistently sought cost-savings by forcing staff to leave and especially by reducing the standards of education offered to business students; whilst simultaneously spending tens of millions of pounds on a prestige new building. Accordingly, making myself more than unpopular with OUBS management, I have strenuously fought the reduction in educational standards – not least by discreetly whistle-blowing to various levels of OU management, as well as to the DTI, and even directly to Ron Deering. The net result has been that, in order to ‘…shut him up…’, Roland Kaye – as the Dean of OUBS - engaged in a campaign of harassment which, having taken advantage of a predictable breakdown in my health to force me out, has meant that I personally have been left, in limbo, with my career and reputation – both of which were the most important aspects of my life - wilfully destroyed, and even my personal life outside of work reduced to a hermit-like existence as a result of the medical conditions which still afflict me.
123. The cynical reduction in OUBS educational standards, in order to cut costs, has been under way from the mid 1990s, when the number of MBA electives was almost halved. Even as recently as November 2003, OUBS academic-related staff were told that a further half dozen of them would be made redundant. Indeed, the clear priority is now on savage cost cut-backs, regardless of the impact on the service to students and – even worse – on the quality of the education offered. In particular, the new MBA programme, which – already delayed for a number of years by interventions from the Dean – had been under development for five years, has been abandoned and development limited to minimal updates of existing courses. Despite having ten times as many staff as when the existing MBA was originally written (albeit that most of these now provide support for the management machine rather than contributing directly to teaching), OUBS management has allegedly had major difficulties finding the resources to develop even one new course – let alone a complete new programme! This will leave OUBS with an outdated MBA programme in which most parts are up to 15 years old.
124. Indeed, since its launch in 1990, the ‘developments’ on the MBA have almost all been designed solely to provide cost savings rather than improve – or even maintain - standards. Thus, the number of electives has been progressively reduced from more than ten to just five, half those originally offered; with the result that the programme is now largely compulsory with no opportunity for students to broaden their knowledge. At the same time residential schools - which provided the essential face to face contact needed to counteract the isolation imposed by distance learning - have been cancelled. Even the ‘Dissertation’, which is a major compulsory element of other MBAs but which was offered by OUBS as an elective, has now gone. All of this may have saved the OUBS more than 25% of its overall costs, and helped pay for the magnificent new building, but it means that its students are no longer offered the best MBA available. Indeed, as I was starting to publicly argue even before the latest cut-backs took place, the resulting MBA now fails to meet even the minimum standards demanded by AMBA and HEFCE (the two key organisations monitoring standards in this field).
125. A very real tragedy, therefore, may be that the enviable reputation of the OU has been brought so low, in this case, by the wilful actions of just a few of its servants! OUBS management will no doubt argue that its declining ethical standards have been forced on it by the similar trends in modern management practice. To that I will simply answer that the OUBS management of a decade ago, which built the justifiably high reputation of OUBS, thought its duty was to offer leadership in business standards; a position I was fighting to maintain since this was – I passionately believed – at the heart of its then outstanding record of success.
The stress put on the ‘climate of fear’, which was reported by witnesses at the Tribunal and not denied by the OUBS team, showed just how far the OUBS standards have now disintegrated. From the happy ‘family’ atmosphere, of a decade ago, the atmosphere in OUBS has deteriorated to the extent that many staff now feel they are being bullied by management and genuinely fear their jobs are at risk if they complain.
126. I am more sympathetic to those in the OU who say that the desperate situations forced on it by government demand equally desperate measures. But two wrongs never make a right; and the OU still ultimately depends on the goodwill generated by its high ethics. I trust that, having been taught a painful lesson by the final settlement of this present legal action, the OU will swiftly act to put its house in order; so that it can regain the high moral ground which is so important to its leadership of UK higher education.
127. OUBS management, of course, knew that I had, or would have, opposed these deplorable developments strenuously and stridently; by whistle-blowing if necessary. Accordingly, the OUBS management approach to my own position was characterised by the deliberate pressures it applied to force me out. Thus, in addition to the overt bullying and the ‘failure’ to address my unacceptably high workloads, the timescales for resolution of the problems were unnecessarily extended; latterly by vexatiously ignoring all the clear deadlines set for its actions. As a result, I was deliberately not allowed any opportunity to convalesce – with pressures removed – and recover from my illness. Indeed, despite the relatively rapid approvals provided by OU management, OUBS still managed to drag the initial stages of the process out for more than a year; and even then, having failed to force me into resignation or much worse (in the full knowledge, as warned by its medical advisors, of the dangers of self-harm or even suicide faced by someone in my depressed mental state), completed it by the constructive dismissal.
128. The pressure has continued even after my resignation. My solicitors had to ask the tribunal to force the defendants to provide a whole range of documents and answers legitimately required of them but which they – vexatiously (in line with Roland Kaye’s plan clearly stated to OU Personnel) – had failed to provide on the due dates.
129. Indeed, it is clear that the OU’s access to the large pool of funds provided by the taxpayer has deliberately been used to leverage these pressures by vexatiously forcing me to spend money, month on month, until ultimately I have – as an impoverished pensioner who necessarily has limited funds (which OU management were well aware of, and took into account, in the 2002 grievance procedures) – have had to spend all my savings on the legal costs to date. This has forced me to largely dispense with the support of my legal team for the last stages of this legal process. I will now have to conduct the case before the tribunal myself, without the expert support the OU will have. Indeed, the Dean made it clear that something like this, of bleeding me dry financially, was his preferred strategy; in his earlier email to OU Personnel reporting his proposed actions. Regrettably, he has indeed succeeded in bleeding me dry, though not of ‘shutting me up’. If I am to obtain the necessary closure, which will start to resolve my medical problems and recover my reputation, I must continue the action despite this war of attrition; and even though his tactics have now placed me at such a disadvantage. I will no longer be able to follow the legal protocols, rightly demanded by my lawyers but which unfortunately I myself am not fully be familiar with – and I apologise to the tribunal in advance for this. This may significantly weaken my case in terms of the finer points of law, but it hopefully will still allow me to put my overwhelming moral case, along with some semblance of a persuasive legal case, before the tribunal, and ultimately before the ‘court of public opinion’. This, I hope, will finally help me achieve the closure I have been seeking for the past two years!
130. It is fair to say that the repugnant behaviour, of the OU and especially of OUBS, has seriously aggravated my medical condition. This behaviour would have been intolerable if indulged in by the worst behaved commercial corporation fighting for its life. It is nothing less than mercilessly cold-blooded in a leading business school living on its inherited reputation for high academic and social values in a university feather-bedded by relatively generous government funding. It is compounded by the fact that the OUBS cannot claim ignorance of the effects of its actions, since within its boundaries it also includes the OU Law School which puts large numbers of law students through the early stages of their legal education.
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