British interwar management: The debate

After reviewing the interwar macro-economic environment, this chapter provides an introduction to the debate relating to the extent to which British management implemented some of the fresh ideas espoused by both the ‘management movement’ and other sources. The ‘dominant narrative’ is considered first, followed by an assessment of the revisionist school’s views. This will highlight the two key aims of the collection, namely, to scrutinise this revisionist school’s evidentiary basis and then to present a range of case studies to assess whether there was more continuity than change in how owners and managers responded to the challenges and opportunities of that era. It will also stress that the methodology adopted in this collection is based on analysing the causal interaction between rhetoric, ideas and practice, tracking the evidence on which historians must ultimately rely. Brief descriptions of the case-study chapters will be provided as a means of preparing readers for the conclusions outlined in Chapter 10.