The Vice-Chancellor

Professor Bill Buenar Puplampu, C.Psychol, FGA

Vice Chancellor and Professor of Organisational Behaviour

Vice Chancellor’s Welcome

A special warm welcome to you as you explore our website and all the information available about Central University (CU).

Established as an educational initiative of the International Central Gospel Church in 1988, Central University started out as a Pastoral Training Institute. In 1993 it became the Central Christian College. It received Institutional Accreditation to offer tertiary programmes in 1998; at which point it became Central University College with affiliation to the University of Cape Coast. It gained Presidential Charter and became an independent University in 2016 and was renamed Central University.

We are one of the leading Christian Universities in Ghana and firmly believe that our faith in God and the Holy Scriptures positions us to deliver on our mandate to train leaders who will be ethical, transformative, professional and able in their chosen fields of endeavour.

Since our first Congregation of 2002, we have graduated over 20,000 students. These have obtained qualifications in Business, Theology, Humanities and the Sciences. We have 22 undergraduate programme specialisations and 8 postgraduate programmes, with instruction taking place on three campuses: Miotso, Accra and Kumasi. Instruction is delivered in weekend, day and evening modes.

Over the years, Central University has been a trail blazer in many areas within the private Higher Education arena in Ghana. We ‘democratized’ HE by setting up the worker-friendly Mataheko programme. With instruction in the evenings and weekends, we helped many people obtain degrees and paved the way for several other private operators to enter the market. In 2007 we opened what us perhaps the largest integrated campus of a private University in Ghana when we moved to the Miotso Campus on the Tema-Aflao Road. From 2007 to 2010 we launched a series of science programmes: Nursing, Physician Assistantship and Civil Engineering; and became the only other University in Ghana offering Architecture. With 189 faculty, we have over the years spent considerable sums of money supporting faculty to obtain much needed PhD qualifications. This has yielded fruit and we now have nearly 40% holding terminal degrees.

Our programmes are domiciled in our Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences; Central Business School; Faculty of Law, School of Pharmacy, School of Medicine & Health Sciences; School of Engineering & Technology and School of Architecture & Design. We have faculty who are research active and advocacy driven. Our administrators are keen to serve.

Central University operates in the fecund but challenged Ghanaian and larger African context. Ours is a land and continent of much opportunity and potential but constrained by behavioural, governance and limitations of political and institutional leadership. We believe therefore that our mandate is to operationalize our Christian faith and energise our students to think and engage with the realities of our context. We believe our mandate is to charge our faculty and staff to drive our students to be community conscious, faith driven and become God-inspired game-changers for humanity. We are confident that wherever our graduates find themselves: in government, business, ministry, community, medicine, science, the law, general administration…they will deploy behaviours and solutions that will benefit society.  We believe our mandate is to produce professionals and managers who grow to understand that we all have a ‘charge to keep and a God to glorify’. 

We welcome to you to peruse these pages. If you are a potential student, go beyond the review of our website and get in touch with the Dean of the Faculty/School where the programme you are interested in resides. If you are a potential employee, do take the next step and remember we have a calling to fulfil and ours is not only about the pecuniary benefits of work but the potential impacts and lives we may transform. If you are a potential partner or collaborator, our doors are open to credible prospects.

We are very much a work in progress, but committed to the highest ideals of faith, integrity and excellence as we engage the business of teaching, research and preparing young minds and hearts for a God-ordained and potentialized future.

Professor BILL BUENAR PUPLAMPU PhD C.Psychol AFBPsS FGA

Professor Bill Buenar Puplampu obtained his PhD (1994) from the University of East London in Organizational Behaviour & International Human Resource Management. He is also a graduate of the Executive Institute of McGill University in Canada (1998) and the DAAD/DIES University of Osnabrueck in Higher Education Management (2012). A product of the Presbyterian Boys Secondary School, Legon, he took his first degree in Psychology from the University of Ghana (1985) and followed with an MSc (CNAA) in Occupational Psychology from the Polytechnic of East London (1990). 

He started his teaching career in the UK with a part-time position at the University of East London and later a full time post at the University of Westminster. He later moved in the early 2000s to the University of Ghana. He is a Chartered Psychologist of the British Psychological Society with specialization in Occupational and Organisational Psychology. 

Prior to appointment as Vice Chancellor in 2017, Professor Puplampu spent more than 16yrs at the University of Ghana (Business School) where he was Head of Department of Organisation & HRM; Chair of the EMBA Programme Committee and Editor of the Business School’s Academic Journal. He was appointed Dean of Central Business School in 2010 and Pro Vice Chancellor (Academic Affairs) at Central University in 2015.  He has served as external examiner for Rhodes University, University of Pretoria, North West University (all in South Africa) and Makarere University in Uganda. He has been a visiting scholar at the Pan African University in Nigeria and an invited speaker at London Metropolitan University, University of the West Indies and North West University. He is a member of the Hamburg Global University Leaders’ Council and was elected to fellowship of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018.

He is passionate about the application of organisational behaviour and psychological concepts to national development, human capital development, corporate governance, and individual dimensions of work life and the leveraging of organisational structures, cultures and processes for institutional growth and efficiency. He has – through PwC Ghana and PsyconHR – provided advisory services for multinational firms as well as organisational, governance and project assessment assignments in West African countries such as Liberia, Togo, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire and served on various Boards and Committees (Independent Director, Merchant Bank; Chair, Royal Bank; Databank Educational Fund; National Committee on the set up of the State Interests and Governance Authority). He currently serves on Ghana’s National Development Planning Commission and is a Board member of the National Insurance Commission. 

His research has focused on employee motivation, organisational culture and corporate leadership. He was a member of Professor Fred Bird’s 5yr project on Global Responsibilities of Business; BJ Punnet/T.Lituchy’s 10yr LEAD research project and led the British Council funded 3yr project investigating corporate responsibility and occupational health and safety in the UK, Tanzania and Ghana. He worked with Professors Hevina Dashwood & Kernaghan Webb on the CSR activities of Canadian mining firms in developing countries. He currently co-leads (with Professor Stella Nkomo) the 6yr Research Culture project looking into research culture in universities in six African countries. His research has led to several papers, chapters, books and invited scholarly public lectures at different international Universities and forums.  

Selected Papers & Chapters 

• Puplampu, B. (2017). Return to Africa to mine an African understanding of employee motivation: Sankofa. Africa Journal of Management, 3, 4, 1-23 https://doi.org/10.1080/23322373.2017.1375811   
• Dashwood, H. and Puplampu, B. (2015). Multi-stakeholder Partnerships in Mining: From Engagement to Development in Ghana. In Grant, J.A., Compaore, W.R. and Mitchell, M. (Eds.) New Approaches to the Governance of Natural Resources: Insights from Africa. Palgrave-Macmillan. Basingstoke, pp131-153. 
• Puplampu, B. (2015). Building the research culture in an African Business School: An intervention model and a research agenda, European Business Review, 27, 3, 253-280. 
• Senaji, T….Puplampu, B., Adedoyin-Rasaq, H. (2014). Leadership effectiveness, motivation and culture in Africa: Lessons from Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda. Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, 31, 4, 228-244.
• Puplampu, B. (2013) Employee Motivation in Africa. In Management in Africa – Macro and Micro Perspectives. In Lituchy, T, Punnet, B.J. & Puplampu, B. (Eds). Routledge, New York. pp.270-290 
• Puplampu, B. (2012). Organisational Culture: variable, elastic and malleable. A study of how variable practices may construct an organisation’s culture. Asia Pacific Journal of Business and Management, 3, 2, 1-21 
• Puplampu, B. & Dashwood, H. (2011). Organisational Correlates of corporate reinvention – how a mid-tier mining firm mainstreams its corporate social responsibility imperatives. Business and Society Review, 116, 4, 467–507 
• Dashwood, H. & Puplampu, B. (2010). Corporate Social Responsibility and Canadian Mining Companies in the Developing World:  The Role of Organizational Leadership and Learning. Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 30, 1-2, 175-196.
• Puplampu, B. (2010). Leadership as engagement, leadership as system development: A contextualised Ghanaian Study. European Business Review, 22, 6, 624-651.
• Puplampu, B. (2005). Toward a Framework for Understanding the Distressed Organization: Insights from practitioner-based organizational interventions in an emerging economy, Consulting Psychology Journal, 57, 4, 246–258.

Co-edited Books 

• Management in Africa – Macro and Micro Perspectives (Routledge, 2013); 
• Occupational Safety & Health and CSR in Africa. Repositioning Corporate Responsibility towards National Development (Cranfield University Press, 2013)  
• Sustainable Management Development in Africa – Building capabilities to serve African Organisations (Routledge, 2016)

Selected Public Lectures

• Ghana’s Human Capital Development Agenda 6^th National Development Forum of the NDPC British Council Accra October 2019
• Combating corruption in Public Service Institutions through Stakeholder Participation and promotion of Ethical Leadership Key Note UN/Public Services Commission day Accra, June 2018
• Democracy, bureaucracy, citizenship & the Psychologist Key note 50^th Anniversary of Psychology Department, Great Hall University of Ghana April 2018
• Saving the future generation from the scourge of corruption and environmental degradation  Ghana Bar Association Conference, Sunyani, September 2017 

• Between the elephant and the ant hill: Organisational behaviour through African lens. Public Lecture North West University, South Africa April 2017 
• Leading and managing the dynamics of change through the professionalization of the public service Keynote 8^th conference of Public Service Commission, Koforidua, April 2015.
• Corporate Leadership in the Developing World: Journeys in human connectedness Public Lecture, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados, November 2013
• 50 years of Business Education: Determining new frontiers Keynote 50th Anniversary Celebrations of University of Ghana Business School, Legon Ghana, 2012
• The Ghanaian Higher Education landscape University of Lulea, Sweden, 2009

SPEECHES

1.Congregation Speech for 2017-18 Academic Year

2. Congregation Speech for 2018-2019 Academic Year