Management Learning in Historical Perspective: Rediscovering Rowntree and the British Interwar Management Movement

Abstract

British interwar management (1918-1939) has been criticized as overly conservative, comprising a core of progressive firms amidst a mass of conservatively-run, familydominated businesses. According to the dominant narrative, British firms exhibited little interest in new managerial approaches. Our study of the Rowntree business lectures and British interwar management movement challenges this view; suggesting British managers displayed greater openness to innovation than is commonly recognized. We uncover and analyse a network of British firms engaged in management education through organized peerto-peer communication, facilitated by lectures and management research groups initiated by Seebohm Rowntree. Our primary contribution to the literature is to offer a more nuanced perspective on the evolution of British management learning in the interwar years. This reveals dynamic knowledge networks reflexively engaged in advancing and codifying practice-based learning to promote the diffusion of effective solutions to shared problemsbuilding communities of practice, codifying management knowledge, and drawing on an ethos of 'business as service'. By undertaking archival research to create a coherent body of documentary material, and making this available to others, we also make a methodological contribution, creating a new 'space' for future researchers to explore, from which they can write new management histories of their own.

Quaker Business Ethics as MacIntyrean Tradition

“…Nonetheless, Quakers are often associated with a reputation for honesty and integrity and their business ventures were often established with socio-economic ambitions , drawing upon religious principles and ethics (Fincham 2017). Quakers were well-known for their hard work which was successfully leveraged through strong bonds of kinship, dense industrial networks of co-religionists (Burton and Turnbull 2019) and continuous innovation in organisation and management (Maclean et al 2020). In this section we attempt to place Quaker business ethics within MacIntyre's broad concept of traditions before going on to suggest that there is an important affinity between Quaker business ethics and MacIntyre's own preferred tradition of ethical thought in the following sections.…”

“…It should be recognised, however, that ensuring all voices are heard in decision-making is especially challenging in business contexts, and not all Quaker businesses embedded the 'voice of labour'. For example, in the first-half of the twentieth century, Quaker firms held four Quaker Employer Conferences to discuss issues of the day including the voice and claims of labour, and which were followed by The Rowntree Lecture Series that bought together employers and employees from different levels of an organisations' hierarchy to confront pressing issues in British industry (Maclean et al 2020). However, while Quaker firms embraced issues such as trade union membership, profit-sharing, and works' councils (Child 1964;Kimberley 2019), the voice of labour was often heard on the Quaker firms' own terms, and cooperative and common forms of ownership that widely shared power and decision-making were often dismissed or resisted due to concerns over future profitability of the enterprises.…”

The Impact of the University Classroom on Managing the Socio-Educational Well-being: A Global Study

“…The second country with the highest number of articles is the United Kingdom, with a total of 154, and presents the second total number of citations, with 1973, and the H index, with 27. This peculiarity indicates the interest of American and English publications on the impact of the university classroom on managing of the socio-educational well-being [99][100][101][102]. The United States has been at the forefront of the ranking of the most prolific countries in the production of articles about research throughout the period analyzed, thus highlighting its research power.…”

História, Memória E Passado Em Estudos Organizacionais E De Gestão

“…For example, Cooke and Alcadipani (2015) showed how the introduction of business schools in Brazil was the result of a broader movement for the Americanization of management education. Maclean, Shaw, Harvey, and Booth (2020) clarified the development of British management education and the role of knowledge networks and communities of practice in forming management learning in interwar Britain. Both suggest the tenets of American exceptionalism were not as readily accepted as commonly assumed but were challenged and translated to these different realities.…”