Kenneth Abeywickrama is an international management consultant on privatization and enterprise restructuring. He has worked for the World Bank, USAID, and International Trade Center (UNCTAD/WTO) and for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, often as team leader of multi-disciplinary teams of international experts. He has experience in a variety of countries including Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Lesotho, Sri Lanka, Austria, Mongolia, Bosnia and Albania, China, Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil, Nigeria and India.
Mr. Abeywickrama graduated from the University of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1958, and Ashridge Management College in UK. Before he became an international management consultant he served in a variety of senior positions in his home country. He was the Head of Marketing of Unilever (Ceylon) Ltd. the country’s largest consumer products company. He also functioned as the Chairman-Managing Director of a large ailing state enterprise, the State Timber Corporation of Sri Lanka. He is credited with having successfully turned around the Corporation to a profit making enterprise. It is one of the case studies analyzed by Professor James Austin of the Harvard Business School in his book Strategic Management in Developing Countries (Free Press of McMillan, 1990). It was also highlighted in the California Management Review (Spring 1986) and the Asian Wall Street Journal (Sept. 22 and 28, 1981).
His book on management, Adventures in Management, published by Sage Publications of New Delhi, in 2007, was the best seller in the business books category in the first part of 2008 in India.
hello seeya ,nice website!!
Thank you, Manik! I am gald you are able to read my blogs.
Seeya
your welcome seeya!!
Dear Kenneth,
I am very happy and proud as a Sri Lankana that you are able to give a glimpse of your contribution to society at large through many engagements of your professional skills in management. Personally I have learnt much from my near forty years of association with you in the areas of marketing, international business and management. Thank you for sharing your expertise with me.
God’s blessings to you for many more years of such engagement.
Eardley
Dear Sir,
I am Ahmed Omer Shammakh the youngest son of Omer Mahfood Shammakh who was managed the firm of Yeslam salim Maasher in Yemen.
I am very happy that you still remembered my father in your article (Yemen in the Seventies).
Ahmed Omer
Sir,
It is nice to see your website. I apologise I have had no time to read some of the interesting material I see there. I think since you were my boss few decades ago, you have made me a workholic. I am indebted to you and I think your mentoring at the start of my career made me the professional I am today.
I learnt so much from my association with you since late 70s. Thanks for sharing your experiences with a wider audience and promise to read the articles soon and come back to you.
Good luck,
Sriyani
Hi Keneth,
Having known you since our days with Unilever (then Lever Brothers) and having followed you from then I have the highest respect for what you have at all times displayed – being honest to one self. You have not feared to say what you sincerely felt but importantly not just making statements but making them logically and supported by relevant information. I will continue to enjoy your works.
Regards,
Willie
Hi Uncle, I like your article on money.I think people who even work for banks,like myself, do not know how money is generated.Your article is revealing and interesting.
Dilan
Dear Sir,
I wonder if this was published in any newspaper. If not, and if you are agreeable, I would feel privileged to carry this in The Nation, of which I am the Editor. Please get back to me on this: msenevira@gmail.com.
Cheers
Malinda
Greetings, Malinda!
You may certainly do so. But the real author of this Profiles in Courage is in Colombo: David Blacker at spookylead@hotmail.com
Kenneth
Dear Sir,
I joined as a sales representative at Lanka Milk Foods in 1995, and heard lot of you and most of the administration documents contiues, at present I work as a sales controller at kelani Cables PLC with is a subsidry of ACL Cables. and last week we had a training done by Mr. Daya Wahalathanthri , You were very greatly admired and the lessson eas on Back to Basics. He told that you were the Guru , All the best Sir, Still we follow all the good things that you thaught.
Best Regards,
Ralph