THE boss of one of Scotland’s biggest business membership groups walked away from the job after meeting resistance to his attempts to reform the organisation.

Mark Bevan quit the Scottish Council for Development and Industry (SCDI) on Friday just 15 months after succeeding Ross Martin as chief executive.

The organisation, whose members include listed Scottish companies, councils and other public sector agencies, did not elaborate on the reasons for his departure.

However, a well-placed source said Mr Bevan had become frustrated that his attempts to modernise the body had not been sufficiently embraced.

“Mark understands that the SCDI needs to change, it’s quite an old-fashioned organisation,” he said.

The source said the organisation has to move on from how it was run by Alan Wilson, who led the SCDI for 12 years before stepping down in 2007.

“The culture is more Alan Wilson than it is 2018, and I mean that with great respect to Alan Wilson who led the organisation for a long time, but in a different generation, and when things were done in a different way,” he said. “I would suggest [that] despite the sort of cajoling of various board members that it has not moved as quickly to make itself as relevant today as it has been in the past, and that is going to require some hard decisions.

“Bringing the team as a whole on that journey has proved to be quite difficult. I think Mark just got to the point where he felt the resistance to change was so great he was going to go off and look for something else to do.”

The source said that the SCDI, which exists to promote Scotland’s economic development, has to modernise to make it more relevant to the current business and financial climate. While members would routinely renew their subscriptions in the years before the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, he said pressure on company budgets means they now demand more value for money.

“People are a wee bit more selfish when it comes to these things as well,” he said. “There is a little bit more of the ‘what’s my business getting out of it’, as opposed to what it might have been in the past, which was this was for the greater good of Scotland and its economy. That’s really what SCDI really should be.

He added: “Mark’s been desperately keen to get the organisation back to doing that in a much more energetic and dynamic way, but it’s proved quite hard to move the focus away from the day to day.”

Membership levels are understood to be steady, added the source, who believes there is no threat to the longevity of the organisation despite the current challenges it faces.

It is understood that Mr Bevan will take some time to plan his next move.