The Higher School of Economics at Russia’s State University last week honoured York Professor Emeritus James Gillies, the founding dean of York’s Schulich School of Business, with an honorary degree for his contribution to the education of Russian academics in corporate .jpg)
governance. The Moscow-based Higher School of Economics is one of the leading graduate institutions in Russia for the study of business and economics.
Right: James Gillies
Gillies served as Chair of Schulich’s Canada-Russia Program in Corporate Governance, established in 1999 to train Russian academics to teach corporate governance in universities and executive education programs across Russia, as well as to provide training for directors of Russian corporations. The program provided corporate governance education in Toronto and Moscow to more than 140 professors from throughout Russia and led to the establishment of Russia’s first Corporate Governance Centre and the Russian journal Corporate Governance in Transition. The program was largely financed through funding provided by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).
In February, the Canadian Institute of Corporate Directors (ICD) named Gillies a recipient of a 2007 Fellowship Award, presented to Canadians who have distinguished themselves by bringing sound corporate governance to boardrooms across the country.
Gillies is an acknowledged expert on the subject of corporate governance and has served as a director on the boards of more than 30 corporations. His book, Boardroom Renaissance: Power, Morality and Performance in the Modern Corporation (1992), is one of the seminal works in the corporate governance field. He recently co-authored the groundbreaking and widely acclaimed book Inside the Boardroom: How Boards Really Work and The Coming Revolution in Corporate Governance (2005).