John Dearden Remembered
John Dearden, a professor at HBS for more than thirty years, died in January at a nursing facility in Connecticut, after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 84.
An authority on managerial accounting and a pioneer in the use of computers in business, Dearden joined the HBS faculty as a lecturer in 1959 after a decade in Ford Motor Company’s finance department. Promoted to full professor in 1964, he was named the first incumbent of the Herman C. Krannert Professorship of Business Administration in 1969. He retired from the active faculty in 1990 and received the School’s Distinguished Service Award in 1995.
Dearden served as a mentor to a number of HBS students who went on to become members of the Business School faculty, including F. Warren McFarlan. “John Dearden was one of the early visionaries regarding both the potential impact of IT and the special management challenges and opportunities it would pose,” said McFarlan, a student in the first class Dearden taught at the School.
Dearden chaired the Control faculty from 1968 to 1970 and served three times as head of the required first-year MBA course in that subject. He published twelve books during his career and wrote more than forty articles for academic and professional journals.
Born in 1919 in Lancashire, England, Dearden immigrated with his family to western Massachusetts in 1924. He received a bachelor’s degree from American International College in Springfield. Having become a naturalized American citizen, he joined the U.S. Navy in 1943, attended Wharton during his service, and then studied economics at the University of Pennsylvania. Although he had planned on a career in teaching, a job offer from Ford diverted him for the next decade.
Dearden is survived by his wife of more than 58 years, Helen Marie (Borden), and their four children. Donations in his memory may be made to the Alzheimer’s Association, 919 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 1100, Chicago, Illinois 60611-1695.
