DEARDEN, John 1919-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born November 19, 1919, in Lancashire, England; died January 9, 2004, in Woodstock, CT. Accountant, educator, and author. Dearden was the Herman C. Krannert Professor of Business Administration emeritus at Harvard University, where he had taught for over three decades. A British immigrant, he grew up in Massachusetts, obtained U.S. citizenship, and joined the U.S. Navy in 1943. After World War II, he completed his undergraduate work at American International College in 1945, followed by an M.B.A. in 1946; Dearden studied for his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania for two years, but did not complete the degree. Instead, he became a certified public accountant in 1948. An offer from Ford Motor Company to manage its financial systems department lured him away from his intended teaching career, and he spent 1949 to 1959 at the auto company's headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan. He finally left to join the faculty at Harvard University's Graduate School of Business Administration, where he attained tenure in 1964 and five years later was named Herman C. Krannert Professor of Business Administration, a position he kept until his 1990 retirement. Dearden was a devoted educator, a fact that was recognized when he received the Wharton Graduate School's Fiftieth Anniversary Gold Medal in 1971, and again in 1995 when he won the Distinguished Service Award from the Harvard Business School. In addition to his Harvard career, Dearden notably helped establish the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad from 1966 to 1967, and he participated in Harvard's executive education program in Switzerland from 1979 to 1981. Dearden also authored a number of business books, including the textbook standard Management Control Systems (1965; 5th edition, 1989), and other works such as Computers in Business Management (1966), Cost Accounting and Financial Control Systems (1973), and Management Accounting: Text and Cases (1987).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Boston Globe, January 17, 2004, p. C12.

Chronicle of Higher Education, January 30, 2004, p. A26.

ONLINE

Harvard University Gazette,http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/ (January 22, 2004), "Business School's John Dearden Dies at 84."