Remembering Hal Fearon

Our friend, progenitor, and visionary in the field of supply management, Harold “Hal” Fearon passed on October 21, 2023. Hal was born in Pittsburg, PA, on April 22, 1931. Hal earned a BA and MBA from Indiana University, served in the US Army, and earned his Ph.D. from Michigan State University. In 1961, he became an assistant professor at Arizona State University.

Hal spent his entire academic career—almost 30 years—at Arizona State University. During that time, he served as the chair of the Department of Management for 17 years and helped grow the Department's faculty from six to 32 members. In 1984, Hal helped establish and became the chair of a new Department of Purchasing, Transportation, and Operations, which is the current Department of Supply Chain Management in the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. He authored or co-authored multiple books on supply management and published over 450 articles in business and scholarly journals during his career. However, beyond these publications, two of his major contributions to our discipline were founding the Journal of Supply Chain Management and CAPS Research.

Hal founded the Journal of Purchasing in 1965 and served as its editor for 9 years. Hal advocated that a scholarly journal in the field of purchasing was needed to advance the profession and offer an outlet for dissertation and other purchasing research. An additional reason for the creation of the Journal was to enhance the academic respectability of purchasing as a profession. The Journal of Purchasing changed names, and in 1999, it became the Journal of Supply Chain Management to acknowledge supply chain management as the paradigm encompassing research in purchasing and supply management.

The Journal was repositioned in 2008 with the mission of being the journal of choice among supply chain management scholars for behavioral, empirical research. Hal was one of the key stakeholders when this decision was made. He commented at the time that, “This will either be the end of the Journal or a spectacular success, but either way it needs to be done.” We are so glad that Hal was able to see his visionary creation of the Journal of Purchasing over 55 years ago paving the way for one of our discipline's premier journals today.

In 1986, Hal established the present-day Center for Advanced Procurement Strategy (CAPS) and remained its director until 1996—7 years after retiring from Arizona State University. CAPS is a joint venture between Arizona State University and the Institute for Supply Management with a mission of conducting practice leading research. Hal's vision of creating CAPS has led to the membership of Fortune 1000-sized companies with US$3.2 trillion in aggregate revenue and footprints in 120 companies and the publication of hundreds of reports with 13,000 downloads just in 2023.

While a professor, Hal was a co-founder and member of the board of directors of Rio Salado Bank in Tempe and a trustee of the State of Arizona Public Safety Personnel Retirement Fund. Hal was also a general partner from the early 2000s until 2020 in The Southwest Growth Fund, a hedge fund that invested in companies based in the US southwest.

Beyond his many accomplishments, Hal was a marvelous person and colleague. I worked with Hal at CAPS Research in 1994, while I was a doctoral student at Arizona State University. Hal and I would sometimes discuss my coursework and the literature that I was reading. While there were many pearls of wisdom that I took away from these conversations, probably the most memorable was Hal's advice about practicality. Hal would say, “You know Craig, if you read and learn about something, but you never share it with others, then what's the point?”

Hal is survived by Dottie, his wife of 69 years, two sons, Rick and Scott, and their wives, five grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. He will certainly also be missed by his extended family in the supply chain management community.