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A GlobaLens is a Major Sponsor at THE ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT Meeting PAGE 12
few years after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Bill Davidson began discussions with B. Joseph White, then dean of the U-M School of Business Administration, about making a gift to the school. “Neither of us knew where (the discussion) was going,” White, now president emeritus of the University of Illinois, recalled recently. The two had lunch at a suburban Detroit Chinese restaurant and talked about several possibilities for the focus of a significant gift. One was manufacturing. Another was transitional economies. “Bill immediately gravitated toward transitional economies as the focus,” White said. “We discussed at length and over several meetings the magnitude of his gift. At the time of the announcement of the William Davidson Institute (on April 23, 1992), $30 million was the largest private gift ever given to any business school, public or private. We were all proud of that - but the real reason for the size of the gift was that Bill wanted to be sure there was enough money to do great things for our students, faculty and the world.” Twenty years later, the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan has stayed true to the vision of its founder
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– that is, doing great things for U-M’s students, its faculty, and the world at large. “Bill was very proud of the Institute and the work it was doing,” said Karen Davidson, who replaced her late husband on the WDI board of directors when he passed away in March 2009. “I know he would be happy with how it has grown in recent years in both size and scope. The Institute is having the impact he envisioned it would 20 years ago.” As Davidson and White were discussing a potential gift, the fall of communism a few years before had created great opportunities but also great challenges. Namely, how can the former communist countries make the economic transition to a market economy? Davidson experienced this obstacle firsthand when his company, Guardian Industries, was negotiating to build a plant in communist Hungary in the mid-1980s. The country was considered the most progressive of the communist regimes. But Guardian’s people had to repeatedly revisit the fundamental principles of free market business. After the agreement was signed, Guardian decided to move the entire Hungarian workforce to Western Europe and the U.S. for intensive training. C o n t i n u e d o n pa g e 15 >