Why put yourself through the hours and cost of an academic qualification in security management such as a masters degree? The new man in charge of the course at Loughborough can answer – because he’s been there. Mark Rowe met him.
Danie Adendorff is speaking on the phone to a man possibly interested in doing something with Loughborough. Beyond the digital radio in his window-sill, snowflakes are falling from right to left onto the campus of Loughborough University. Donie is the new director for the security management programme at the School of Business and Economics. He took over from the ‘venerable’ Tom Mulhall (and that’s the uni’s own description!). Tom is from Cork and Danie from KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, and each retains his accent. Each came to the academic side of security management from work in security – Tom in telecoms fraud and other investigations, mainly for BT; Danie in contract guarding. While other academic qualifications at UK universities, Portsmouth and Leicester for example, have a criminology slant – and are based in criminology departments – Danie stresses the management side of security management. <br><br>Danie – an Afrikaans, Zulu and Dutch speaker; ‘English is my fourth language’ – was a policeman for 12 years to 1992, notably as a branch commander of a syndicate fraud unit. “And then from there I opened my own guarding business, in South Africa. I had about 500 full-time staff and another 300 part-time.” We sip coffee from the machine downstairs. Meanwhile Danie and former colleagues were working internationally on investigations into the grey market in goods. Briefly, a brand of beer or cigarettes may be brewed or made legally in one country; the ‘grey’ comes in if the product manufactured in country A is shipped to country B without permission, so it sells at country B’s much higher price. Like other small businesses, Danie’s closed at the end of the 1990s when the South African government brought in affirmative action law for businesses. He says of that time: “I was adamant that I would go somewhere and equip myself with something another human being cannot take from me; and I was driven, driven, to qualify myself academically.” Hence his long hours of guarding – from guarding black bins at Waterloo station to ivory towers. Not that Loughborough University has towers, ivory or otherwise. To skip very briefly through the six Loughborough modules – they cover business management, law and criminology, security risk management; physical security, information and IT security; and research methods. If you don’t have a first degree, you start with the certificate or diploma, then go on to the masters (MSc). For that top award, the MSc, you pass all six modules and do a 20,000 word dissertation. This can take three years – part time, by distance learning, with some study weekends and forums where you gather at Loughborough. For the dissertation, you can study some security issue to do with your work, encouraged by the uni as that helps your employer (who may help you with fees or time), you in your job, and you apply the academic rigour you’ve learned, whether it’s what are the corporate risks in some part of the world or department. Danie asked, in a word; is the occupation of security a profession? Not yet, he found. He proposes to go into this further in a PhD. Why is security lagging behind other managerial disciplines; what will it take academically to overcome this; and what’s the path (if any?!) to board level for the security manager? Where are the security managers with MBAs? (Either of us can only think of one or two.) Where lies the difference between the salesman of a security product or service, and the manager in a business who puts the security-risk point of view, and is listened to because it’s not just sales talk? We – the UK private security sector – are very good at developing the ability to do security, and to package it, Danie argues; but the management half of security management is neglected. <br><br>Danie enrolled on the Loughborough MSc and earned a higher distinction, graduating in December 2009. So, if you are a masters student and ask for extra time to finish your essay – beware, if you have an excuse rather than a reason, Danie may smell it a mile off!? Or if you ring or email Danie to ask about doing a masters, Danie has been in your shoes. Like much in life, the effort and cost of doing an academic course has practical and sublime benefits. Danie begins by talking in terms of the ‘educated man’ being more complete. But more education also equals more pay. “The cohort of graduates I was in – our education over three years cost us each about £10,000. With our new appointments, every one of us in that cohort – the guy with the least, the least, pay increase was £16,000 per annum. The guy with the highest pay increase was nearly £40,000 … there’s no better investment. Also, there’s a demand for masters-qualified security people. So, from an economic point of view it’s absolutely a no-brainer.” You learn not only about the nuts and bolts of security management – the hows and the whys – but, Danie adds, life skills; an alternative approach to common problems, and how to question and do research. And not just any old research, but to the point and in good time – the tricks of the trade, if you like. That extends to making best use of your time and powers of concentration. Rather than set aside ten hours on a Saturday, when your brain might only be good for one or two hours of taking in things, Danie advises devoting one or two hours each day. Physical and academic fitness are alike he suggests; the first exercise might be hard, but do a bit each day, and you will be able to do more, faster; and you will enjoy being able to do it. And during study can come those ‘eureka!’ moments of insight, that you cannot put a price on, when things abut the world make sense. With education, the security guard can turn himself into a superviser and the superviser into the middle manager. And as for the work involved in going through modules and writing essays; Danie makes the point, how many risk assessments and surveys have you, the manager or consultant, written?! Why not do a course and get acknowledgement for your skills?! There’s no excuse. Too old? Danie started at 45. <br><br>Naturally, a new man has new ideas, not that he knocks the course that after all he passed through – ‘it’s a very good course, it exposes you to business administration, investigations, law and criminology, computers and information crimes. It’s well rounded.” Two areas he is looking at is to offer more in the way of the study of investigations – ‘fulfilling a need in the market’ – and to seek closer relations with the security industry. For one thing, what of all the research done by students, that then simply sits in cupboards, when it could benefit the industry, and be of use when making cases to your human resources department? Whether it’s the practical (what should and shouldn’t the first person, usually from security, do at a crime scene? or when interviewing a suspect?) or the legal (surveillance in commerce for example; where’s the balance between the employee’s right to privacy and the employer’s right to protect assets). Danie ends by returning to the question that has driven his years of study – making the security manager a manager. If something is not done, will the security person bump up against an ‘organisational ceiling’? “And by that I mean you have an MSc in a discipline; your ceiling with be that discipline, and you will not be competitive to reach the board. We must make sure in our security training and in our course content that we are not victims of that ceiling. and that is what I emphasise the training of managers with security ability.” <br><br>About Danie Adendorff<br><br>Originally from South Africa, he worked in contract security at Eurostar in London then gained a masters in security management at Loughborough University. He joined Bucks New University where he was course leader in the MSc in Business Continuity, Security and Disaster Management. A member of the Security Institute, he was the first winner of the institute’s Wilf Knight Award, in 2009. In 2010 he won the annual Lord Imbert university dissertation prize. Married 26 years, with two sons; one serving in 1 Rifles.
Pictured: Tom Mulhall and Danie Adendorff inside Loughborough’s Business School.
