William J. Bruns

Professor Emeritus William John Bruns Jr., the Henry R. Byers Professor of Enterprise Administration, handed away on September 1, 2022, at his residence in Plymouth, MA. Bruns was extremely acknowledged as a distinguished scholar and trainer within the area of accounting.

Bruns first visited Harvard Enterprise Faculty as an affiliate professor in 1969 following appointments at Yale College and the College of Washington. After becoming a member of the HBS college, he was named the Henry R. Byers Professor of Enterprise Administration in 1993. A member of the Accounting and Administration Unit (identified on the time as Management after which as Accounting and Management), he was the creator of nicely over 100 circumstances, notes, workouts, and instructing notes, numerous which stay bestsellers right this moment. He additionally authored Accounting for Managers and a companion teacher’s handbook, reprinted into its third version, amongst different books.

In a message to the HBS neighborhood, Dean Srikant Datar famous, “In every thing he did, Invoice introduced equal measures empathy and rigor, holding himself and others to excessive requirements with kindness and compassion. He was beloved by his college students and acknowledged as a beneficiant and caring colleague.”

Bruns taught the required Monetary Reporting and Management course within the MBA Program, within the Proprietor/President Administration Program, and in a number of centered packages, together with Strategic Finance for Smaller Companies. He was identified for his skillful case technique instructing and sometimes shared these abilities with different college by way of quite a few instructing seminars. He served as unit head for Management, course head, and chair of the Tutorial Efficiency Committee; moreover, he was among the many pioneering group of college engaged within the Faculty’s Worldwide Senior Managers Program in Vevey, Switzerland, serving as its director for numerous years within the Nineteen Eighties.

“Invoice was the consummate HBS trainer who set the usual for the remainder of us,” stated Robert Simons, Charles M. Williams Professor of Enterprise Administration, Emeritus. “He had an uncanny capacity to face within the sneakers of scholars as he crafted lesson plans to make advanced subjects each attention-grabbing and comprehensible. Not surprisingly, his circumstances have been favorites amongst college and college students. Invoice was additionally a beneficiant mentor to youthful college (together with me), serving to us develop our case writing abilities and offering suggestions and ideas to enhance our classroom instructing.”

Krishna Palepu, the Ross Graham Walker Professor of Enterprise Administration, stated, “Invoice was a form mentor and colleague for me after I joined HBS as a junior college member. He was an achieved scholar who cared deeply about impacting the world by way of his analysis and instructing. He introduced a whole lot of heat and dedication to the classroom. He was additionally a really artistic case author—I nonetheless use a few of his circumstances in instructing. I’ll miss him vastly.”

Following his retirement from HBS in 2001, Bruns joined the Northeastern College college on the D’Amore-McKim Faculty of Enterprise, instructing undergraduates monetary and managerial accounting. Invoice earned his levels in enterprise administration on the College of Redlands and the Harvard Enterprise Faculty. He attained his PhD from the College of California at Berkeley.

Invoice is survived by his first spouse, Barbara Dodge; his second spouse, Sharon (Shay) McKinnon; his kids, Robert, John, David, Michael, and Anastasia Catherine; 5 of their spouses; and 4 grandchildren.