Management Learning in Historical Perspective: Rediscovering Rowntree and the British Interwar Management Movement
Maclean, M; Shaw, G; Harvey, C; et al.Booth, A
Date: 29 July 2019
Article
Journal
Academy of Management Learning and Education
Publisher
Academy of Management
Publisher DOI
Abstract
British interwar management (1918-1939) has been criticized as overly conservative, comprising a core of progressive firms amidst a mass of conservatively-run, family-dominated businesses. According to the dominant narrative, British firms exhibited little interest in new managerial approaches. Our study of the Rowntree business lectures ...
British interwar management (1918-1939) has been criticized as overly conservative, comprising a core of progressive firms amidst a mass of conservatively-run, family-dominated 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 peer-to-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 problems – building 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.
Management
Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy
Item views 0
Full item downloads 0
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Management Education in England: The Urwick Report
Bryan, Yvette (University of Exeter Graduate School of Education, 3 November 2009)This study provides a contribution to the historiography of management education in England. Criticism of British management expressed in Government policy over the past sixty years has concluded that a low level of ... -
The paradox of strategic management accounting
Burns, John; Nixon, Bill (Elsevier, 1 December 2012)The evidence that strategic management accounting (SMA) techniques have not been adopted widely and that developments in the SMA literature seem to have languished may be consistent with the relatively short lifecycle of ... -
SUDS, LID, BMPs, WSUD and more - The evolution and application of terminology surrounding urban drainage
Fletcher, Tim D.; Shuster, William; Hunt, William F.; et al. (Taylor & Francis, 2014)The management of urban stormwater has become increasingly complex over recent decades. Consequently, terminology describing the principles and practices of urban drainage has become increasingly diverse, increasing the ...