Economist, professor.
Born at Winnipeg on 1 July 1922, youngest son of Irish immigrants Joseph Hamilton Donaldson (c1890-1979) and Catherine McIntosh (?-?), he graduated from the University of Manitoba at the age of 19, then earned a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Toronto. In the midst of the Second World War, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, where he served as an instructor to flight crews from England, Australia, and New Zealand at what was known as the Number One Central Navigational School. At the end of the war, he decided to resume his studies in the United States and earned an MBA in 1948 from the University of Chicago after three summers of study, while teaching at the University of Manitoba during the rest of the year. In 1948, he married Eileen Johanna “Joan” Steele (1923-2005) of Winnipeg, and they went on to have four children.
He had planned to pursue a PhD degree at Chicago, but when he came across Harvard Business School (HBS) professor Myles Mace’s book on small-company governance, he turned his attention toward Harvard. “The topic appealed to me, because in Canada I worked in a community dominated by small firms,” he said. “As a result, I decided that Harvard would be a better place for me.” He took courses at Harvard Business School in 1950-1951 before returning to his native Manitoba to resume teaching and work on his doctoral dissertation. He was invited to join the HBS faculty in 1955, even before completing his doctorate in commercial science in 1956. His career at HBS culminated in him becoming an expert in corporate financial management. He is recognized as someone who had an enormous influence at the School as a professor, mentor, researcher, and administrator from 1955 to 1993. In 1967, the University of Manitoba named him a Distinguished Alumnus.
He presided over the popular second-year elective course Corporate Financial Management for several years and chaired the HBS Finance Unit from 1965 to 1968. His involvement in Executive Education included two stints in the School’s middle management programs, a year as head of a program for senior managers that then took place in Switzerland, and a six-year assignment in the Owner/President Management Program for entrepreneurs that ended upon his retirement in 1993. His research agenda produced six books he authored or co-authored, as well as articles in leading publications such as Harvard Business Review, Financial Executive, and The Journal of Financial Economics. “Gordon Donaldson was one of the intellectual leaders of Harvard Business School for many years,” said Jay W. Lorsch, the School’s Louis Kirstein Professor of Organizational Behavior. “He had a very deep understanding of how significant corporate financial decisions are made, and he was also interested in the values and beliefs of the people making them.”
In addition to his many academic achievements, Donaldson made a lasting mark on Harvard Business School through his leadership in a number of important administrative positions. For eleven years he oversaw the hiring and promotion of faculty, first as coordinator of the appointments process and then as Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Development. He also chaired faculty committees charged with revising standards for promotion, examining the School’s research policy, and reviewing the ramifications for HBS of the Harvard University-wide abolishment of mandatory retirement in 1994.
Throughout his long and distinguished career at HBS, Donaldson was the epitome of the words “a gentleman and a scholar.” His portrait hangs in a spacious solarium that bears his name in the Senior Faculty Center. The glass doors that lead to it proclaim: “In grateful recognition of the many and distinctive contributions to the Harvard Business School by Gordon Donaldson, our friend, conscience, and a member and leader of this faculty.”
In 1995, the Harvard MBA Class of 1963 honored Donaldson by establishing a professorship in his name to support the kind of excellence in management education that his career personified. When he received an award from Harvard Business School in 1997 in recognition of his years of distinguished service, the citation read in part: “By leading us in the perpetual pursuit of excellence, you have set our standards for the century ahead.”
A longtime resident of Concord, Massachusetts, he remained active for many years after retiring. Although he and his wife spent part of the winter in Florida, he could often be found working in an office in the Senior Faculty Center he helped to establish. He also enjoyed teaching at reunions organized by graduates of the Owner/President Management Program. In the latter part of his life, after moving from Concord, he maintained homes in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, and Parkland, Florida.
He died at Parkland, Florida on 12 February 2010. At the time of his death, he was Harvard’s Willard Prescott Smith Professor of Corporate Finance, Emeritus.
Birth registration [Gordon Donaldson], Manitoba Vital Statistics.
1931 Canada census, Ancestry.
Obituary [Joseph Hamilton Donaldson], Winnipeg Free Press, 3 April 1979, page 51.
“Harvard Business School Professor Gordon Donaldson Dead at 87,” Harvard Business School Newsroom, 22 February 2010.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 10 September 2025
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