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| Hans B. Thorelli |
| Date Of Birth: | September 18, 1921 |
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| Date Of Death: | August 18, 2009 |
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| Service Date: | Memorial Services Sunday, August 30, 2009
IU Foundation, Bloomington
4:00-7:00 p.m. |
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Hans B. Thorelli died August 18, 2009 at his home in Bloomington. A Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, he was born in Newark,NJ of Swedish parents in 1921, and grew up in Sweden where he took his LLB, MA, and PhD (Polictical Economy) degrees at the University of Stockholm. He was a Lieutenant in The Royal Signal Corps during World War II. While studying on a fellowship at Northwestern University, he met his wife-to-be, Sarah (Sally) V. Scott of Atlanta; they were married in Stockholm in 1948.
In 1950-51 Dr. Thorelli was visiting lecturer in the Scandinavian Area Program at the University of Minnesota. While there he received a Rockefeller Foundation grant to finish his multidisciplinary dissertation on the origins of the federal antitrust policy, published simultaneously in the U.S., UK and Sweden in 1954. He received a medal from Lund University for the best treatise in the social sciences of the year in Swedish universities. It is still being used in several law school courses in the United States. After heading the Committee for Economic Development (CED) in Stockholm for a few years, Hans joined the corporate marketing services at General Electric headquarters in New York City. In the fall of 1952, he served the United Nations as resident consultant. He became Professor at the University of Chicago in 1959. While at Chicago he served in Stanford University's program for upgrading the teaching of international business in developing countries. In 1964, he joined Indiana University as Professor of Business Administration and spent his first year at IU on leave of absence as visiting professor in the Harvard-run International Management Development Institute in Lausanne, Switzerland. After serving as Chair of Marketing at IU in 1966-69, he was visiting profess at the London Graduate Scholl of Business for a year. Upon returning he was appointed E.W. KelleyProfessor in 1972, a position he held until retirement 20 years later. He was also named distinguished profess. The University of Gothenburg awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1984.
Thorelli is the author or editor of 12 books, two co-authored with his wife. He has written over 100 articles in professional journals and served on the editorial boards of seven journals. He directed the first field study of consumer experiences in the marketplace in a developing country (Thailand) in 1974. In the same year he joined the Consumer Affairs committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and was instrumental in generating Chamber support for the small claims court legislation. His and Sally's concern with consumer information and protection led to his being named to President Ford's Consumer Advisory Council from 1975-77. He chaired the first doctoral research ever on consumer satisfaction on 1970. In 1976 he received a grant from the Bank of Sweden U.S. Jubilee fund for consumer policy research.
Other works deal with international marketing and strategy. Hans pioneered the use of computer simulations in international business in 1963 and directed the team developing the INTOPIA strategy exercise, published in 1994. INTOPIA goes into Supply Chain Management, in- and outsourcing, strategic alliances, foreign currency management, new product development and other aspects of business strategy at the global level. Together, these "management games" are being used by over 250 universities and companies in more than 50 countries.
Thorelli was renowned for his interest in organization theory and strategy. He applied human ecology to the analysis of organizations and their interaction with their environments. In 1973 and again in 1992, he arranged national conferences at IU with leading scientists and executives in the area of strategic interaction. The first conference resulted in the book "Structure + Strategy = Performance" (the first business book published by IU Press), the second in two volumes on what he dubbed: Integral Strategy.
Dr. Thorelli served as a U.S. delegate at the OECD in 1985, and as a member of the Council of the Small Business Administration, 1976-77. He was a public member of the National Advertising Review Board, 1984-87 and 1990-93 and a vice president of the American marketing Association. He was an elected fellow of the Academy of International Business and the Royal Academy of Engineering Sciences, Stockholm. He twice received fellowships from both the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. A true cosmopolitan, he served as visiting professor for semester or annual assignments in a dozen universities and on a short-term basis in an additional 20, among them, the University of Aix-en-Provence (France), Queensland (Australia), Helsinki (Finland), Universidad Catolica de Chile, the Universities of South Africa, Lund (Sweden), St. Fallen (Switzerland, Leipzig and Koblenz (Germany), Ljubljana (Slovenia), Malaga (Spain) and the Dalian and Shanghai Institutes of Technology (China).
He won two excellence in teaching awards from MBA students. Research grants were bestowed by the Midwest Universities Consortium for International Activities, Dow Chemical Corporation, and General Electric Foundation. He also fount the time for consulting work with numerous companies, including General Motors, IBM and Sears, Roebuck and Company. At the time of his passing he was the learder of an international team to launch the INTOPIA simulation on the internet.
Hans Thorelli is survived by his wife, Sarah and two children, a daughter, Dr. Irene M. Thorelli of LaCrosse, Wisconsin and a son, Thomas H. Thorelli, a lawyer in Chicago and five grandchildren.
Memorial services will be held Sunday, Augut 30th from 4:00-7:00 p.m. at the I.U. Foundation. State Road 46 Bypass, Bloomington. Memorial contributions may be made to the I.U. Kelley School of Business, c/o I.U. Foundation, P.O. Box 500, Bloomington, IN 47402.
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