ABSTRACT
The program for training Soviet senior executives at the Fuqua School of Business (FSB) came into being as the result of the personal initiative of Mr. J.B. Fuqua, chairman of Fuqua Capital Corporation. In the late 1980s Mr. Fuqua began to contemplate retiring from business and wanted to engage in some type of philanthropic activity in his retirement. He had read for many years about the declining economic and business conditions in the Soviet Union and wanted to help improve the situation in some way. Mr, Fuqua decided that giving Soviet managers access to American management education was the best way he could contribute. To that end in 1989 he provided a grant of $4 million to the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. The Fuqua family had been generous supporters of the School for many years, and therefore the Fuqua School was a natural site for the project. The goal of the program was to give Soviet senior executives the know-how to change their enterprises in order for the businesses to function according to the principles of a market economy.
