Dag Coward: A pioneer of business administration in Norway
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| Professor Dag Coward, 1910 - 2000 | |
Dag Coward stands out as the father of business administration in Norway through his own contribution to the core topics of business administration and through the establishment of a Norwegian business administration terminology, based on the German tradition.
Coward was born in Kristiansand in 1910. After finishing school in 1928 he studied at the University of Oslo, where he took the economics exam in 1931. Business administration was not part of the economics study programme in those days, but Coward received work experience from industrial companies during his studies. He was employed as assistant to Professor Ingvar Wedervang after qualifying, working on projects of a business administration nature. One of the tasks Professor Wedervang had responsibility for was to undertake a cost analysis for the retail sector in Norway, and this became Coward’s main occupation in the years 1932 to 1935. Revenues and cost breakdowns were analysed for nine different sectors in association with the respective retail sector associations and in all nine different sectors were analysed, including ironmongers, grocery shops, manufactured wares and private practising dentists. Wedervang and Coward published eight of these sectors together, and Coward published the analysis of private dentists himself.
Professor Wedervang was also active in the preliminary work for the establishment of NHH in Bergen and was a member of the evaluation committee for the first teaching position in business administration. Coward became aware of these developments through Wedervang and applied to an associate professorship in business administration. When he was awarded a scholarship to study abroad in the spring of 1935, he withdraw his application and Swede Robert Kristensson was appointed to the professorship instead.
In the autumn of 1935 Coward travelled to Göteborg to study business administration under Albert ter Vehn. He completed his studies in two semesters, with the highest possible marks. During his second semester in Göteborg, Coward became class mates with Eilif W. Paulson and this became the foundation of a friendship that lasted his whole life.
The following year Coward took a study tour to Germany where, amongst others, met "the legendary professor Eugen Schmalenbach" and Ernst Walb. In the spring of 1937 he taught business administration at the University of Oslo and he subsequently spent twelve months at Harvard University, Harvard Business School and the University of Chicago, having received a Rockefeller scholarship. Professor Frank Knight was of particular importance to Coward, awakening his interest in risk and uncertainty problems, a topic that would become the area for his doctorate thesis.
In 1937 Coward published a critical article on the work of Norges Standardiseringsforbund (NSF - The Norwegian Standardisation Federation), pointing out that recent proposals would bring Norwegian accounting terminology into an rather hopeless dispute with the Swedish and German definitions of corresponding terms. As a consequence Coward was asked to join the committee, where he became deputy chairman and later acting chairman.
In the autumn of 1938 and the spring of 1939 Coward taught again at the University of Oslo, but he decided afterwards to accept the offer of a research scholar position at NHH. An influencing factor in this decision was the fact that Professor Ingvar Wedervang had in the meantime become attached to NHH as Rector. The attachment to NHH lasted until Coward retired in 1977, having spent 38 years at the school.
Coward started teaching at NHH in the autumn of 1939 and was appointed acting associate professor following Professor Robert Kristensson's return to Sweden after the Second World War came to Norway in April 1940. A long period of intense teaching activity now followed for Coward. He took over main responsibility for teaching cost accounting at NHH and began to create Norwegian teaching materials within the area. Over the next few years he published several books and articles that contributed significantly to the teaching of business administration in Norway. In the autumn of 1943 Coward began to combine forms and formulae that were useful in solving practical tasks in Norwegian industrial companies as a support for teaching organisation, and he further developed an introductionary course in business administration.
The heavy teaching commitments and other tasks meant that Coward let his work with risk and uncertainty sit for some years. In the mean time he taught in the area of insurance issues and made use of the opportunity to gather the work together in a doctorial thesis on risk issues when he began to find the time at the beginning of the 1950s. Coward awarded his doctorate in 1953 and in 1954 he was formally appointed a professor. In the 1960s and 1970s he took over more of the teaching in financial accounting and auditing.
Coward had many positions of responsibility during his time at NHH, playing an important role in a series of internal panels and committees concerning the study plan, the establishment of new programmes, developing guidelines for the admission of students and the assessment of scientific positions. The close cooperation with Ingvar Wedervang continued until Wedervang stepped down as Rector in 1956. Coward continued to work closely with the subsequent rectors, Eilif Paulson and Rolf Waaler, and in 1961 the cooperation was formalised through the establishment of the position of Vice Rector. In the autumn of 1962 he was elected Rector, a position that he came to hold until 1972.
Coward's time as Rector was first and foremost characterised by expansion. In 1963 NHH moved from its location in the centre of Bergen to a new campus in Breiviken. The number of students rose from 304 in 1963 to 974 in 1972 and the number of employees increased from 67 to 160, with the total number of scientific positions being more than doubled. His time as Rector was also characterised by cooperation, with strong expansion of the student involvement in the senior management of the school and the building of contacts with other academic institutions in Norway, with the outside environment and with the international research community. Coward's leadership style was quiet-mannered but engaging. He was loyal towards points of view and decisions in academic organs and used the power of example to appeal for contribution and cooperation.
Coward's dedication, academic involvement and sense of responsibility lead to him being willing to take on new tasks. Coward was in charge of the audit law committee in 1953-56, the accounting laws committee in 1959-62 and the audit law committee in 1965-66. Associate professor Paul Vårdal was secretary to the last two of these committees and together they developed a Masters’ programme in auditing at NHH, namely Høyere Revisorstudium (HRS – Master degree in auditing). He gave, together with associate professor Paul Vårdal, a significant contribution to the establishment of this important programme at NHH. Dag Coward retired in 1977.
Dag Coward was a Knight of the first class of the order of St Olav for his work on business administration and the administrative areas. In connection with the celebration of his 90th birthday in 2000 one of the largest auditoriums at NHH was named after him. He died later the same year.
Translated and abridged from: Norstrøm, C. J. (2003) “Dag Coward – en bedriftsøkonomisk pioneer i Norge”, Magma, Årgang 6, Nr. 5, p87-96
