Dr Kevin Burgess
Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Defence Acquisition
Location: Centre for Defence Acquisition, Vincent Centre
E: k.burgess@cranfield.ac.uk
T: +44 (0)1793 314756
Department of Management and Security
Current activities
Kevin Burgess is the Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Defence Acquisition and is the Programme Coordinator for the Defence Acquisition Body of Knowledge Research Programme. Kevin’s specialist areas of interest are across:
- Large asset management
- Innovation in supply chains
- Knowledge management and learning systems in inter-organisational social systems
- Evidenced based policy
Background
Kevin has both private and public sector experience. In the past twenty years he has held a range of senior management and executive roles in asset intensive industries. Prior to joining Cranfield University in 2009, Kevin spent his last year in industry in the role of Group General Manager, Corporate Services, for QR (previously Queensland Rail). In this role he was responsible for 985 staff spread across eight divisions and an operating budget of $A600 million. His corporate-wide responsibilities included Project Management ($A10 billion in projects), Supply ($A1.5 billion p.a. expenditure), Information Services (corporate-wide computing including mainframe), Property ($A600 million in assets), HR Services (15,000 employees), Rollingstock Engineering (design of delivery of all types of railway vehicles), Learning and Development (developing and delivering educational and training programmes and e-learning) and Accounts Payable. In his prior role of General Manager, Supply, in QR Kevin implemented a five year strategy which delivered bottom line savings in excess of $A100 million – a figure which was independently audited and verified.
In the 1980s when he worked for Telecom (now Telstra) Australia (90,000 staff at the time), Kevin was the Manager of Vision 2000, the largest organisational culture change programme ever tried in that country. This role led to Kevin gaining a greater appreciation of the need to engage more effectively with soft system issues in order to bring about sustainable change and improved performance.
Kevin also has a decade of experience as an Evaluator for the Business Excellent Award (BEA) (the Australian equivalent of the European Quality Award or the US Baldridge Award), both in Australia and overseas. Evaluating best practices organisations has strengthened his enduring interest in combining theory and practice. In recognition of Kevin’s combined practical experience and academic expertise he has been awarded the title of Adjunct Professor at three Australian Universities - Griffith, Southern Cross and Sunshine Coast.
Selected publications
Refereed Journals Articles
Kerr, D.V., Houghton, L. and Burgess K. (2007). Power relationships that lead to the development of feral systems, Australasian Journal of Information Systems, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp 141-152
Burgess, K., Singh, P.J. and Korugla, R. (2006). Supply chain management; a structured literature review and implications for future research. International Journal of Operations & Production Management. Vol 26, No. 7.pp 703-729
Burgess, K. and Singh, P.J. (2006). A proposed integrated framework for analysing supply chains. Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, Vol 11, No. 4. pp 337- 345
Harber, D., Burgess, K and Barclay, D. (1993). Total Quality Management as a Cultural Intervention: An Integrative Review. International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management, Vol.10, No. 6. pp 17-27
Harber, D., Burgess, K and Barclay, D. (1993). Total Quality Management as a Cultural Intervention: An Empirical Review. International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management, Vol.10, No. 6. pp 28-41
Book Chapters
Burgess, K, “Striving for operations excellence within Queensland, Case Study No.5 in Samson, D. and Singh, P.J. (eds.) (2008) Operations Management: An Integrated Approach. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, U.K. ISBN-13: 9780521700771.
Conferences
Refereed Conference Papers
Jenkins, D. and Burgess, K. (2010, September). Open Innovation in Defence. Hamburg International Conference of Logistics, Hamburg, Germany.
Williams, T., Burgess, K. and Charles, M. (2010, August). Governance and Collaboration in Interorganizational Networks. Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Montréal, Canada
Moore, D. and Burgess, K. (2010, August). Emerging Professionalism in a Defence Workforce. 4th International Public Procurement Conference, Seoul, Korea.
Burgess, K. and Singh, P. (2010, June). How does the social system of a supply chain improve an organisations operating performance? An Australian Case Study. 8th ANZAM Operations Symposium Management, Sydney, Australia.
Moore, D., Young, S., Ito, P., Burgess, K. and Antill, P. (2010, May). US Export Controls and Technology Transfer Requirements – a UK Perspective. 7th Annual Research Symposium, Monterey, California, USA.
Burgess, K. (2009, October). Moving from Procurement to Acquisition. International Symposium on Defence General-purpose Materials Acquisition (ISDGMA 2009), Wuhan, China.
Burgess, K., Kerr, D. and Houghton, L. (2009, June). Communities of Practice: The missing link in Enterprise Resource Planning implementation. 21st Annual NOFOMA, Conference, Jönköping, Sweden.
Burgess, K. (2008, May). The Application of the Business Excellence Framework to Supply Chain Management – A Case Study. 6th ANZAM Operations, Supply Chain and Services Management Symposium, Gold Coast, Australia.
Burgess, K. and Doebeli, G. (2008, June). Business process management: are implementation breakdowns due to conceptual failures in ontology. International Association for Critical Realism, XI International Conference, London
Mardiasmo, D., Tywoniak, S., Brown, K., A. and Burgess, K. (2008, November). Asset Management and Governance: An Analysis of Fleet Management Process Issues in an Asset-intensive Organization. In: International Conference on Infrastructure Systems: Building Networks for a Brighter Future, 10 – 12 November, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
