Professor Sir George Bain Biography
George Bain was born and raised in Winnipeg. He studied economics and political science at the University of Manitoba and taught there for a year. In 1963 a Commonwealth Scholarship took him to Oxford for doctoral studies in industrial relations. In 1966 he became a Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, and in 1969 the Frank Thomas Professor of Industrial Relations at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. A year later, he was appointed Deputy Director and then, in 1974, Director of the Industrial Relations Research Unit at the University of Warwick; and in 1983 he became Chairman of Warwick Business School. He was Principal of London Business School between 1989 and 1997, and President and Vice-Chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast between 1998 and 2004.
His many publications on industrial relations have given him an international reputation in this field. He also helped to establish the University of Warwick as an international centre of excellence in industrial relations; to transform Warwick Business School into one of Europe’s leading business schools, and London Business School into one of the top ten in the world; and to revitalise Queen’s University Belfast after thirty years of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland.
Although primarily an academic, his interests and activities have extended far beyond the academy. He has been a mediator and an arbitrator in numerous industrial disputes; has consulted for many public- and private-sector organisations; and has been a non-executive director of several companies in the United Kingdom and Canada.
He has also engaged extensively in public service. He has been Chairman of the Low Pay Commission, which introduced the National Minimum Wage; the Northern Ireland Memorial Fund, a charity offering support to victims of the “Troubles”; the Work and Parents Taskforce, which underpinned legislation on work-life balance; and the Independent Review of the Fire Service, which provided the basis for fundamental reform in this sector. In 2005-06 in Northern Ireland he chaired both the Legal Services Review Group, which set out a new framework for regulating the legal professions, and the Independent Strategic Review of Education, which put forward a new approach for the strategic planning and organisation of the schools’ estate; and in 2007-08 he chaired the Independent Review of Policy on the Location of Public Sector Jobs.
He has received a number of prizes and honours, including eleven honorary doctorates. He was knighted by the Queen in 2001.