Becoming a Teacher and Scholar. The’Hooks’ I Used.
By Jean Boddewyn
Emeritus Professor of International Business
Baruch College, City University of New York

This is a slightly revised version of a letter Jean Boddewyn sent to the AIB Fellows who occasionally exchange communications on major events in their academic and personal lives.
Jean Boddewyn was one of the founding fathers of the Academy of International Business (AIB), President of AIB in the 1990s and Dean of the AIB Fellows until a few years ago. In previous issues of EIBA-zine the life story of John Stopford, John Dunning, Lawrence Welch, Jim Leontiades and others were told.

I never thought of being a teacher when I grew up. It was boredom with a job in U.S. industry that made me pay attention to an ad for a part-time Instructor job that got me started for the next 50 years! Before that, I had worked in a Belgian department store (Galeries et Grand Bazar du Boulevard Anspach) where I loved my job which I quit to emigrate to the United States in 1955. It turned out to be a good decision because the Grand Bazar went out of business after I left!

My first teaching job was in Cost Accounting which I had learned at the University of Louvain with Professor Dereume. He was one of the teachers that made me admire their profession and later inspired me to emulate their dedication and skills such as clarity, eloquence, originality and caring for the students’ learning.

In particular, I had an instructor at the University of Washington to whom other doctoral students kept referring: “Robinson did this, Robinson said that!” but I could not figure out what course(s) he was teaching so that, one day, I asked: “But what does Robinson teach?” The answer “He teaches Robinson!” convinced me that one had to be oneself and unique in imparting knowledge and aspirations to others.

Dwight Robinson and Joseph McGuire at the University of Washington encouraged me to polish and submit two term papers that got accepted and published in the Journal of Marketing and in a book edited by McGuire. These two feats got me well started in research which has been largely conceptual and theoretical in nature although I also did empirical work (e.g., my doctoral case study of the Protection of the Washington State Wine Industry, and a multi-country survey of the standardization/adaptation of marketing practices).

When I first came to the States as an exchange student from Belgium in 1951-1952, I was exposed to the pro-market publications of the Foundation of Economic Education (e.g., Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in one Lesson and Frédéric Bastiat’s pamphlet on the Candlemaker’s Petition) which shaped my libertarian perspective on political economy. Starting with my dissertation, I got attracted by the politics of business as part of a broad consideration of all the environmental factors bearing on organization, management and marketing.

As a scholar, one reads a multitude of books, articles and papers but much of my teaching and research has been marked by a few key readings. Thus, when John Fayerweather at New York University asked me to teach three brand new courses on Comparative Management, Comparative Marketing and European Business Systems, I immersed myself in political science (e.g, Robert Dahl), cultural anthropology (e.g., Karl Polanyi) and functional sociology (e.g., Talcott Parsons) who convinced me that one had to analyze and integrate the actors, processes, structures, functions and environments involved in any phenomenon – in other words, a “system” view is often necessary to do research. Thus was I started on finding “hooks” with which to organize my thinking, teaching and researching.

From John Fayerweather, I adopted the view that the central issues in international business management were: What resources did the firm have to transfer abroad (an economic viewpoint), what adaptations had to be made in this transfer to a foreign society (a socio-psychological and socio-cultural angle), what entering another sovereignty implied (a political perspective) and what “unification” mechanisms were needed to counteract the “fragmentation” created by operations dispersed over several countries (an organizational consideration) – a most useful integration of various disciplines.

From Aristotle (via R.P. Baggozi’s book on Causal Models in Marketing) I borrowed a categorization of the types of explanations we all use because nothing happens unless: (1) it is possible (hence the notion of “conditions, as with the resource-based view); (2) it is wanted (that is, there must be some “motivation” as in the market, resource, efficiency and strategic-asset “seeker” classification), and (3) it is willed because “precipitated” or “triggered” by some external (e.g., a competitor’s move) or internal (e.g., a manager’s decision) developments. This categorization helped me understand early on that John Dunning’s eclectic paradigm was originally only about “conditions – that is, for foreign production to take place, it must be “possible” on account of OLI advantages. Ever since that Aristotelian discovery, I have always asked myself whether the explanation of a particular phenomenon touched base with one or more of these three types of justifications.

I have also been fond of A.O. Hirschman’s “exit, voice and loyalty” typology even though it leaves out such alternative behaviors as “no entry” and “opportunism.” It works well with a “system” view because Hirschman, like Parsons, stressed that the various parts of a society – the economy, polity, community and culture – are interdependent, cooperate and compete with each other to ensure the functioning of societies. In the same vein, Wolfgang Streeck and Philip Schmitter outlined the ways through which “social order” is achieved – as in the following statement that combines the Community, the Market, the State and Private Government (e.g., industry self-regulation): “Most people and organizations behave themselves because they want the esteem of other members of society, they fear losing markets if they do not get it, they are afraid of the strong arm of the law and/or they want to lessen uncertainty about their rivals’ behavior by insuring that common industry-wide rules apply to all practitioners.”

I like these conceptual frameworks because they have helped my organize my lectures, structure my research endeavors and check the arguments used in the papers I review. A last one is borrowed from the late Graham Astley who pointed out that much of IB research is not “international” at all but rather “universal” – that is, applicable to both “domestic” and “cross-border” situations. When you think of it, practically all the theories we use (comparative advantage, transaction-costs, institutionalism, the resource-based view, internalization, etc.) apply as much to trade and investment between New York and California as to the same activities between two countries – a point also made by Jack Behrman and Robert Grosse. To be truly international, a problem must include dependent and independent variables that really cross national borders and do not find an equivalent within a single country – a very exacting requirement.

Et voilà! This set of lenses has helped me think, learn and share during my career in academia, and I bet you have acquired, developed and used a similar conceptual toolkit that has served you well in your lifework. Why not share them with us?

Jean Boddewyn
 

EIBA-AIB
Comments by Jan-Erik Vahlne at the AIB Conference in San Diego, on the occasion of the JIBS Decade Award received by Jan Johanson and himself.

The 1977 JIBS article on ‘The internationalization process of the firm’ is undoubtedly one of the most quoted papers in the IB literature. Numerous Ph.D theses have been written to check out if this model was also applicable to the country of origin of the student and many scholars tried to find out if the findings of the 1970s were still valid in the era of globalisation and changing economic conditions of the following decades.

Already in 2002 at the EIBA conference in Athens the work of Jan-Erik Vahlne and Jan Johanson was recognized in a special panel with the title’ The Internationalization Process of the Firm in Retrospect’. This panel was the first’ Special Commemorative Panel Session about Influential International Business Contributions’, of which the seventh will be organized in Valencia in honour of Yves Doz. In Athens Jan-Erik Vahlne already indicated as to how the Uppsala model could be adapted to take into account the more recent developments. That the authors finally received the AIB-JIBS Award in San Diego, June 29, was more than overdue.

The text below was written out by Danny Van Den Bulcke, and is based on some notes used by Jan-Erik Vahlne for his speech in San Diego. Therefore Jan-Erik should not be blamed for any errors or wrong interpretations.

“0ur model on the internationalization process published in JIBS in 1977 has suscitated a lot of interest. How did this happen and why do we think that it has been referred to so often?

JIBS has been of immense importance not only to us but also to the whole IB-community in Sweden. I, for my part had a paper (co-authored) published in JIBS already in 1974 and I think we were the first in Uppsala, at this very young department of business, being published in an international journal. And in 1975 Jan published his co-authored paper on “the four cases”, which came to be an important stepping-stone to our model. And then JIBS published our model. We indeed have JIBS and its large audience to thank for the status of our model.

With regard to the model, not only the old version but also the new one, I would like to make the following comments. The latter version will be published in the anniversary issue of JIBS that is Volume 40, issue 9, of December 2009. Yet, it is already available on the net.

I have to admit that when we started we were not very familiar with international publications on international business and multinationals. We just went out to collect a lot of data on Swedish domestic companies and their activities. It was induction indeed. Hence, we came to focus on different phenomena as compared with the international economists, who mainly observed and explained international production. We worked with trade data, mainly about exports, while they looked at international movements of capital that is direct investments. Contrary to the international economists we studied the organization of export activities or the supply of international markets. They constructed static models under equilibrium, while we thought that a dynamic approach was more realistic. They assumed rationality while we thought rationality was limited. Our assumptions were more realistic and firm relevant which is of course important for micro-level studies.

To some extent we were, however, “prisoners” of the ontology and epistemology of the economists. Take for example the market concept. A market was defined as the national market for a particular product. In reality perhaps, it comprised only a particular type of customers. More importantly: we thought that a market consisted of a large number of suppliers supplying homogenous products to a large number of customers with homogenous demands. This we have now changed. In the new paper, presenting the revised model we assume a different type of market, that is a different type of environment, namely markets regarded as networks of relationships. We think that this is a more realistic assumption especially for producers´ goods.

We got this more realistic understanding of what a market is really like from a research programme performed in Uppsala on ‘the network view of industrial markets’. In such a network view of industrial markets, it is assumed that the following characteristics apply:

• Resource heterogeneity;
• Long lasting relationships;
• Relationships developing over time via informal processes, implying growing knowledge about each other, trust, commitment – mutual;
• Interrelated routines leading to increased effectiveness and efficiency;
• Product development in relationships;
• The relationship in itself as an important resource;
• Mutual interdependence, lack of some control over one’s own business, but some control over the business of partners;
• Privileged access by the focal firm to information about its network partners; and
• Embeddedness of the firm in a web of connected relationships

What happens in relationships!!! Business exchanges happen in relationships. Product development, e.g. the learning about opportunities.The network is enabling but also to some extent hindering these developments.

If you are an insider you have access to the resources of the network; if you are an outsider you have not. Being an outsider is to suffer from outsidership. An outsider has to work his way in to be able to do business. It is necessary to start interacting. That is the necessary effort to go through and succeed in entering a new market. The father of the research on the multinational corporation, Stephen Hymer, has stressed that entering foreign firms are at a disadvantage, because of the liability of foreignness (we would call it psychic distance), as compared with indigenous firms. In a sense the newcomers know little about the market and are themselves not very much known either. They must have an advantage, a firm-specific advantage, that more than off-sets disadvantages, in order to be able to compete successfully on this market. In our 1977 JIBS paper we focused on this lack of knowledge and how to overcome the disadvantages.We are now arguing there is a more important liability to the entering firm: that of outsidership in relation to relevant networks on this market.

The mechanisms of the revised model are basically the same as of the old one with some additions, such as trust-building in relation to commitment decisions and creation in relation to learning. The important change is situated in the network aspects, making the mechanisms fit even better.

How did it all start? The analysis of export strategy and organization studies was at the basis. During the 1960s I myself had studied the four Swedish firms’ internationalization process, while Jan had concentrated on the Sandvik case. We found that what occurred was ‘learning by doing’, and that this did not fit with the textbooks prescribing optimal choice of market and mode. We introduced the establishment chain concept in which firms would start close to home before deciding on locations much further away.

Why was this model born in Uppsala? Sweden as a small country was and is very dependent on international trade (export) and hence many of its firms developed into multinationals. Also the influence of the internationally experienced professor, Sune Carlsson, who started a new department at the University of Uppsala, was instrumental. He forged the researchers into a real team based on the exiwting synergies in their research and the continued mutual trust even when there were changes in its composition. During the 1960s and early 1970s no one worried about funding or jobs. Research was carried out on the basis of curiosity and fun. Induction!!

Why has the Uppsala model been successful?

It was built on replicable empirical findings.The establishment chain and psychic distance was mistaken for the model. It was simple. Early on the focus was on Sweden and the internationalization of its firms, but soon studies in other countries followed. Researchers looking for previous research found the Uppsala model a useful tool. It was built on more realistic assumptions, was firm relevant, and was based on bounded rationality, path dependence, opportunities driving the process. It was also different from neo-classical economics. Consequently its concepts of learning and commitment became widely used. As such it was a forerunner of the resource based view (RBV). The focus was on market knowledge as a problem and went counter to the view of the neo-classical economists who considered markets as well known and given. On the other hand Edith Penrose and later the RBV did not consider markets. Also the model was based on firm relevance as compared with the “economic models” that were restricted to macro economic relevance.

We started by trying to explain why firms established sales subsidiaries. Initially, we regarded it as a bounded-rationality decision-information problem. Gradually we found that information was a minor issue in comparison with the accumulated knowledge and that change was part of a more or less continuous process and not so much a matter of decisions. Slowly we also realized that we could explain other steps in the internationalization process in the same way, including direct investment, – hence the internationalization process model was constructed. A failure of the paper was that the model was most often considered as a risk reduction model in spite of our efforts to emphasize the importance of opportunity seeking. This is made clear in the 2009 version of the so-called Uppsala Model”.
 

My Travels with Danny:
25 years of Photographic Memories and EIBA Conferences
By Vitor Corado Simoes

Contribution to the ‘Itinerarium Amicorum Daniel Van Den Bulcke’ that looks back at the history of EIBA through the perspective of the Portuguese travelling companion of a globetrotting photographer (from the Itinerarium Amicorum, edited by Filip De Beule).

“When one travels with Danny, it seems that the probability of having the car breaking down, missing flights, unexpected landings (though not necessarily in the Hudson river) and other odd situations is quite high. This is part of a globetrotter’s charm...

Fortunately, such instances have been absent from my travel experiences together with Danny (I don’t know why, but maybe because I have a moderating effect on him or just by plain chance). Apart from carrying his heavy bag under the Brazilian sun to visit the Contemporary Art Museum of Niterói, a masterpiece of Oscar Niemeyer, with a wonderful view over Rio de Janeiro, I have not experienced the troubles reported by other, very reliable, friends. In fact, I have travelled with Danny in all kinds of situations and conditions such as in turbulent airline flights, boat trips on wonderful lakes, bus rides in snowing countrysides, late-departing trains, random walks, and nothing happened... except, of course, the strengthening of our friendship.

I still have a vivid memory of my first walk with Danny. It was in a superb spot, Villa Serbeloni in Bellagio, overlooking Lake Como, during pleasant Fall weather in 1983. John Dunning had invited us to contribute a chapter to a book he was preparing and we spent a week together at the Villa Serbelloni, at the courtesy of the Rockefeller Foundation, to discuss our work. By that time I was not yet in academia, but John’s invitation sparkeled my appetite for research and made me make the right choice later on. I am not sure, but most probably Danny also told me about EIBA during our stay in Bellagio. What I know is that in early 1986 I received a photo from Danny showing how magnificent the Scottish mediaeval heritage was... at least as portrayed by the EIBA Glasgow Gala Dinner arranged by Neil Hood. The cover letter reminded me that I should show up at the next EIBA conference. The invitation has been so compelling that I decided to attend the EIBA meeting in London. It was my first EIBA conference, a very special one since it was jointly held with AIB.

In December 1987 Danny had agreed to organize the conference in Antwerp, at a time when EIBA was not doing all that well. It was a superb conference, not only by its high academic level, but also because of the fantastic social and cultural events. Three aspects are still very present in my memory, assisted by Danny’s photos, of course. First, there was the pre-conference get-together walk through old Antwerp, and the explanations given about the wonderful masterpieces by well-known Flemish painters. Secondly, there was the chamber music concert in a small chapel from which a lovely Christmas spirit emerged. From then on, I have always associated the EIBA conferences in December with a Christmas atmosphere that is often very typical for the country where the conference takes place. Third, there was the exquisite ‘beer & cheese’ Gala Dinner party. I have a picture, taken by Danny (who else?), with different types of Belgian cheese and several half-liter glasses of beer that brought the spirit of the EIBA members and certainly myself into higher regions...

‘Then, we took Berlin’ (to say it with the words of singer poet Leonard Cohen), with Hans-Günther Meissner at the helm of EIBA. Danny’s pictures of the Berlin Wall, and the armed East German soldiers in front of the Wall, still impress me today. However this was also the conference during which I found out that EIBA had a couple of first-class entertainers: i.e. Roland Schuit, playing Santa Claus, and Danny, with his undercooled sense of humour, acutely remembering comic situations that most of us had failed to fully grasp. Some of us were a little jealous by the way he got the attention of the nice girls of the conference secretariat by thanking them for their hard work during the conference with Belgian chocolates. By this time, Danny had already invited me to become the representative of the (then, tiny) Portuguese chapter, and offered me a seat at the EIBA Board.

One of the most ‘magic’ moments we lived together was a year later in Helsinki, singing in the snow in front of the statue of Sibelius. I still have several pictures of the students’choir from the Helsinki School of Economics, with EIBA President Reijo Luostartinen as the soloist. By that time, Reijo had succeeded to convince me about the economic advantages of small countries. Eventually a study group called SMOPEC was formed.

EIBA records show that between 1979 and 2008, i.e. during a period of 30 years Danny missed only one EIBA conference, i.e. the one held in Madrid by Juan Duran. The reason was that he was starting to experience the Chinese ‘attraction’ and could not interrupt his teaching assignment in Beijing to come to Spain. But even absent, Danny left his fingerprint, or should I call it photoprint, all over the conference. As a matter of fact the wonderful photo on the cover of the EIBA Madrid programme, featuring some of the (then) members of the Board, with a bullfighting advertisement in the backstage had been taken by Danny in Jerez de la Frontera, when the Board met there a few months before for the interim Board meeting.

At the Gala Dinner at the end of the Copenhagen conference, the organizer Harald Vestergaard had hired a professional stand-up comedian to imitate EIBA Board members. Harald contracted a very good entertainer to replace Danny. But the almost unanimous decision of EIBA’s ‘citizens’ was that, although he was really good, he had not been able to match Danny’s quality. Nobody else attempted to contract an entertainer to replace Danny again... until we came back to Denmark many years later to be told stories written by Hans Christian Andersen.

Meanwhile, I had become cognizant of Danny’s efforts to ensure the continuity of EIBA and its mainstay the annual conferences. If this is still a hard task today, it was even more daunting in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Danny was continuously looking for new possible venues and scanning the academic horizon to identify qualified and motivated future organisers. His arguments were compelling, and his ability to convince the still undecided was (and still is) very strong. After one had only tentatively admitted the possibility to organise the conference, he did not lose his ‘prey’ anymore. And it has to be added that after one had succumbed to his charming perseverance he provided enormous advice and support until the very day the meeting was held. That is how, he convinced me to host the EIBA in Lisbon in 1993, the year after the conference in Reading organised by John Cantwell.

The Reading conference was memorable because Danny had succeeded in convincing Peter Buckley, then chairman of AIB-UK to have a joint conference on the occasion of John Dunning’s retirement from Reading University. It was there that John Dunning promised his wife Christine to work less hard after the publication of the impressive volume Multinational Enterprises and the Global Economy. We had a very late dinner at a magnificent palace, some miles away from Reading, after the bus driver lost his way in the woods. Danny could not be blamed for this, however.

As conference organizer in Lisbon, I started to appreciate another facet of Danny’s commitment to EIBA and his devotion to the future of our profession, i.e. the Doctoral Tutorial. The mix of professionalism and welcoming attitude he put in the Tutorial was remarkable. Until then I was not aware of the care, commitment and effort he put in the preparation and the organisation of the Tutorial he was responsible for during no less than 17 years, i.e. between 1987, when he launched this initiative, to 2004, the year of his 65th birthday. I still remember the suggestion he made in Lisbon to have a get-together dinner for the faculty and the students on the evening before the Tutorial to allow them to get better acquainted and thereby improving the quality and efficiency of the presentations and discussions. This tradition has been continued since then and certainly contributed to the success of this important initiative.

From Lisbon to Warsaw... More photos to revive my memories. I remember the visit to Chopin’s home and Gunnar Hedlund and Marina Papanastassiou playing the piano. I think it was also in Warsaw that I carried Danny’s bag for the first time. More photos in Urbino, the wonderful and picturesque city. Apparently this was a fascinating place for Danny judging by the many pictures he took of the typical and not so typical sights as well as Federigo de Montefeltro’s nose, used as a logo for the conference brochure by Roberto Schiattarella.

From Urbino up North to Stockholm, to learn how seriously ill Gunnar Hedlund was. I remember our visit to the room in the City Hall where the Nobel Prize dinners are held after the prizes have been awarded. It was interesting to see how eager Danny was to capture such beauty in his, still analog, camera. Maybe he dreamed that there was also a Photo Nobel Prize, and that he might even win it. I think he would be entitled to it, not just for atmospheric quality of the pictures, but also for the kindness and friendship to send, every January, the photos from the previous EIBA conference to his friends and colleagues.

The next Conference was in Stuttgart, efficiently organized by Klaus Macharzina. After Stuttgart we went to Jerusalem, the first and only time that EIBA left the shores of the European continent. The situation was relatively peaceful at that time, although there was a lot of commotion and enormous traffic jams because it coincided with the visit from the US President Bill Clinton. Yet, Eugene Jaffe and Seev Hirsh ran a successful conference in which the special session with representatives of the different religions in the regions under the chairmanship of John Dunning was quite memorable and showed the wide interests of the EIBA membership.

In Manchester Danny became a ‘red devil’, and enjoyed the opportunity provided by Fred Burton to visit Manchester United’s famous stadium ‘Old Trafford’ and to take photos of the field. I myself was honoured to be able to thank the Mayor of Manchester (in full regalia) on behalf of the EIBA Board for his hospitality during our visit to the City Hall. Danny succeeded in capturing this important moment with his camera, which allowed me to show the picture around later on and impress my family and colleagues.

By that time, Danny had already become a specialist on China. Earlier than most of us he had anticipated the growing role of international business and regaled his EIBA colleagues with the stories of his visits to this newly emerging and intriguing country. He also discovered the charms of a still-Portuguese group of three small islands, but about-to-become part of China, i.e. Macau. Danny’s Chinese connection is still very much alive, and he still follows Sino-European relations closely. Last year he convened a special panel at the AIB Conference in Milan about ‘Europe at Fifty’ in which he dealt with that theme.

I missed the Maastricht EIBA meeting and consequently I did not get any pictures. When we met in Paris the following year, I did not attempt to challenge Danny to speak French, even though he himself spoke the language of Molière at the beginning of his speech during the Gala Dinner held on a boat on the river Seine. To compensate for a nasty picture he took of Juán Durán and me during that trip he allowed me later to pose with two charming Spanish young ladies. I also have an unforgettable photo with two nice Greek girls of the Athens conference secretariat, with the Acropolis in the background. Danny was very proud of the fact that he had succeeded to get a woman IB professor to host an EIBA conference for the very first time in 28 years. And rightfully so, because Marina Papanastassiou did an excellent job. That the so-called ‘glass ceiling’ was broken again a few years later when Grazia Santangelo would host us in Catania and also for the third time in 2010 when Ana Teresa Tavares will do so in Porto, is to a large extent due to Danny’s efforts to do away with the gender barriers.

The following year we were back in Copenhagen. I remember Danny trying to choose the best angle to capture the beauty and architectonic irreverencey of the CBS building. As it happened with Harald Vestergaard a dozen years before, Torben Pedersen decided to challenge Danny by going public with the story about a strange trip from Calgary to Banff for the AIB conference a number of years before and an even stranger night at the hotel in Banff. I must admit that it became extremely mysterious and that I am still wondering what happened. I have never seen the photos. I may say: in Danny’s pictures, I trust.

From North to South, from Copenhagen to Ljubljana. From out-dated technology to digital photography. At last, Ljubljana heralds a new era: we have now Danny’s EIBA pictures at the EIBA website in a photo gallery. This enables us to fully appreciate Danny’s photographic capabilities, and to revive the nice moments of EIBA socialisation after the intensity of the discussions about the papers in the meeting rooms. I especially remember three photos from that conference. The first one, with my good Brazilian friend Carlos Hemais who died one year later and was already very ill when he came to the conference. The second picture, features Danny awarding John Dunning with EIBA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in International Business. And, last but not least, a third photo with the participants, including myself, of the panel session about the book in honour of Danny’s career, edited by Ludo Cuyvers and Filip De Beule, entitled Transnational Corporations and Economic Development – From Internationalization to Globalization. Clearly, Danny’s photos have, to a significant degree, become my memory.

Up North, again: Oslo, in 2005. That wonderful half-village, half-city, where one feels relaxed and close to nature, together with the organizational skills of Gabriel Benito brought us another successful conference. Looking at some 50 photos, out of the more than hundred taken by Danny, and displayed at the EIBA website, one wonders how Danny can do so many things at the same time during a three day conference: EIBA chairman and chairing of the Board Meeting, the General Assembly, the AIB West European Region, organizer and chair of two panel sessions, the Doctoral Tutorial, speaking at the Gala Dinner... and last but not least the unofficial photographer. And there also is EIBA-zine, another product of Danny’s entrepreneurship. During the EIBA conferences many participants respond positively and enthusiastically to Danny’s request to contribute a short article for the next EIBA-zine issue. However, for one reason or other, such good intentions rarely materialise and, time and again, as a result Danny takes it upon himself to write most of the articles. This is another facet of Danny’s multi-variate capabilities: a photographer, a journalist, and an outstanding academic. So many features in just one man!
 
In 2006, EIBA moved to Fribourg hosted by Philippe Gugler, in order to clarify the vexata questio of which chocolates taste best: i.e. the Swiss or the Belgian ones, corporate ownership notwithstanding? Danny was courageous enough to take Belgian chocolates to Switzerland and claim that they were better than the Swiss, although he admitted that the difference was marginal, in order not to upset his hosts too much. More important, however, was that, we found a rejuvenated Danny, after the back surgery he had undergone at the beginning of the year. A Danny who could carry his bag again. Contrary to what I had expected he did not show up in Fribourg with a brand new, 200-grams light, camera. Against all medical advice he persisted to handle a heavy camera with several lenses. After more than 20 years I was still not able to predict Danny’s moves. Neither did I realise that after the conference he made a trip to Zermatt to see the Matterhorn, a mountain that had fascinated him since his youth. No wonder for someone who was born in a “plat pays”, to recall Jacques Brel.

From Fribourg, we moved to Catania, Sicily, to experience in loco how old Mediterranean societies function, and how surprising baroque architecture can be. And of course, the Etna volcano. I was not successful in convincing Danny to join me for a trip to Agrigento, as he had already been there during the interim Board meeting. I had the feeling that Danny was taking less pictures of the meeting, perhaps because he was too impressed by the snow covered top of the Etna or fearful of the mafia. Looking at the EIBA website I even have the impression that he himself was photographed more often. In retrospect, the most important feature at Catania was a special plenary session organised by Danny about the second edition of John Dunning magnum opus Multinational Enterprises and the Global Economy. Documented also by Danny’s camera, this was the last EIBA venue where John Dunning made a presentation. John Dunning, the man (and dear friend) who made our lives intersect in Bellagio.

Yet, thanks to Danny, I was also asked to be on a panel in June 2008 together with him as well as John Dunning, Juán Durán and Marjan Svetlicic. This heralds another facet of Danny: namely his ability to identify interesting topics and suscitate a lively discussion among the panel members and the audience about the issues involved, such as ‘The European Union at Fifty’. He reserved the top place for himself, however, featuring in the programme twice, with opening and closing addresses on different topics! But this time he lost: we took so long in our presentations that he got no time left for his last one.

My earlier impression of Danny giving up his ‘duties’ as EIBA’s photographer was not confirmed in Tallinn in December 2008, however. Although he informed us that at the end of 2009 he will step down as Chairman of EIBA, I hope he will continue to come to the EIBA meetings to organize panel sessions and to capture the academic sessions and social activities with his camera”.

Lisboa, 3 February, 2009

Vítor Corado Simões