Robert Spillane (B.Com. NSW, PhD, Macq) is a Professor and past Dean of the Macquarie University Graduate School of Management, Sydney Australia.
He majored in clinical and industrial psychology and worked as a psychotherapist for more than 25 years.
He joined Macquarie University in the School of Behavioural Sciences in 1972 and accepted a full-time appointment in the Graduate School of Management in 1976.
In the 1970s he trained with Albert Ellis in New York and partnered with Michael Bernard to organise Ellis's first Australian lecture tour. In the 1980s he worked with and became a close friend of Thomas Szasz in Syracuse, New York. In recent years he has applied Szasz's ideas to the study of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI), occupational stress and ADHD.
He has taught at the London Business School, the ABIN Institute in Frankfurt, Germany, in Singapore and Hong Kong and several Australian universities and he was a visiting scholar at the Center for Working Life in Stockholm, Sweden. From 2003 to 2011 he delivered a series of widely acclaimed lectures on philosophy and psychology at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Australia.
He has written numerous journal articles and several books on philosophy, psychology and management and a play ‘Entertaining Executives’.
His recent books include: 'Questionable Behaviour: Psychology's Undermining of Personal Responsibility', 'The Rise of Psychomanagement in Australia' and 'Personality & Performance' (with John Martin).
In 2006 he received the international Thomas S. Szasz Award from the Center for Independent Thought in New York for his professional contributions to the cause of human liberty.
