Abstract
To what extent should business have an implication of service when its fundamental purpose is profit-seeking? We explore this issue through a contextually informed reappraisal of British interwar management thinking (1918-1939), drawing on rich archival material concerning the Rowntree business lectures and management research groups. Whereas existing literature is framed around scientific management versus human relations schools, we find a third pronounced, related theme: business as service. Our main contribution is to identify the origins in Britain of the discourse of corporate social responsibility in the guise of business as service. We show that this emerged earlier than commonly assumed and was imbued with an instrumental intent from its inception as a form of management control. This was a discourse emanating not from management theorists but from management practitioners, striving to put the corporate system on a sustainable footing while safeguarding the power, authority, and legitimacy of incumbent managerial elites.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 1614 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1585-1614 |
| Number of pages | 30 |
| Journal | Human Relations |
| Volume | 75 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| Early online date | 19 Jan 2022 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 4 Jul 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The authors wish to thank Editor-in-Chief Mark Learmonth for his support and expert guidance and the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable recommendations throughout the review process. Dr Vivek Soundararajan provided helpful comments on an earlier draft. We are grateful for the assistance of Alan Booth, Johannah Duffy, Heather Makin, Rachel Pistol, Morgen Witzel, and Gary Stringer of the Digital Humanities Lab, University of Exeter. Thanks are due to the Economic and Social Research Council for funding our research (Grant Ref. ES/N009797/1). This article is dedicated to Robert Gordon MacLean (1900–1952), socialist and engineer, Rolls-Royce, Hillington, Glasgow. The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and publication of this article: This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ES/N009797/1].
Funding Information:
The authors wish to thank Editor-in-Chief Mark Learmonth for his support and expert guidance and the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable recommendations throughout the review process. Dr Vivek Soundararajan provided helpful comments on an earlier draft. We are grateful for the assistance of Alan Booth, Johannah Duffy, Heather Makin, Rachel Pistol, Morgen Witzel, and Gary Stringer of the Digital Humanities Lab, University of Exeter. Thanks are due to the Economic and Social Research Council for funding our research (Grant Ref. ES/N009797/1). This article is dedicated to Robert Gordon MacLean (1900–1952), socialist and engineer, Rolls-Royce, Hillington, Glasgow.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2022.
Keywords
- British interwar management movement, corporate social responsibility, human relations, Rowntree business lectures, management research groups, responsible management, rhetoric
