Office workers, business elites and the disappearance of the 'ladder of success' in Edwardian Glasgow

Examines the transformation of office work at the turn of the 20th century by showing how a change in the demographics of the British business class in Glasgow, Scotland. Aspirations of men entering clerical work at the end of the 19th century; Relationship between successful careers and starts in clerical work at the turn of the century; Rewards of independent business

'The machine should fit the work': Organisation and Method and British approaches to new technology in business

‘Organisation and Method’ (O&M) was a discipline promoted in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century as a way of improving the efficiency of administrative enterprises. O&M practitioners were influential actors in the implementation of various information technologies in British businesses. When computers became the new technology, their introduction was seen as a natural adjunct to O&M work. The O&M practitioners understood the connections between the individual tasks to be done, the final outcome desired, and the technologies available. The practice of organizational ‘insiders’ acting as the dedicated mediators of technological introduction resulted in some remarkable successes in computer introduction in Britain in those years. Eventually the O&M approach would be superseded by purely technical experts, arguably to the detriment of user satisfaction

Failure or precursor? 'Organisation and Methods' and the British practitioner tradition of management knowledge

This paper presents the origins and development of a mid-twentieth-century field of British management knowledge known as Organisation and Methods (O&M). O&M was part of the British practitioner tradition wherein the development of management knowledge focused on serving particular contexts but nonetheless developed ideas and approaches to management that are echoed in current management thought. Using archival material left by various actors in the development of O&M, as well as manuals and handbooks used by O&M practitioners, this paper argues that although O&M did not seemingly make a lasting mark on the development of management thought in the UK, its concerns and practices resonate with a number of modern management concerns - process management, organizational memory, accumulation of employees' tacit knowledge as well as caution over the capabilities of new IT systems

The Loss of Balance Between the Art and Science of Management: Observations on the British Experience of Education for Management in the 20th Century

This essay considers the developments in education for management in 20th-century Britain. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, that is, the highpoint of the United Kingdom's economic success, management was considered more of an art than a science, and formal education specifically for management was limited. After the Second World War, Lyndall Urwick's Committee on Education for Management promoted more "scientific" approaches to management and a greater emphasis on "practical" aspects of management. However, the Urwick Report still promoted a degree of balance between the art and the science of management. But as the State and society began to stress the economic contribution of education, as management education came to be dominated by universities, and as the nature of the U.K. economy changed, the provision of broad, liberal education fell by the wayside. Specialization and expertise became the measure of value. But specialization and expertise have revealed themselves to be of limited value in an increasingly complex environment. To help students prosper in their 21st-century careers, what may be needed is a refocusing on the "habits of mind" and intellectual skills fostered by a broad and balanced curriculum

Women's work in offices and the preservation of men's 'breadwinning' jobs in early twentieth-century Glasgow

As Britain's industrial economy matured and the volume of administrative work increased, different kinds of clerical jobs and clerical careers became possible. Using examples from a variety of small- to medium-sized enterprises in Glasgow, this article will describe how the main functions of administrative work - financial, secretarial and managerial - were divided both horizontally and vertically in order to preserve secure, well-paid, 'breadwinning' jobs for men, leaving routine secretarial work for women. The isolation of women in all-women enclaves carrying out shorthand and typing work and the subsequent devaluation of these as kinds of work were of primary importance in the creation of office work that was explicitly women's work

The struggle for management education in Britain: The Urwick Committee and the Office Management Association

After the Second World War several government committees and many occupational organisations in the UK were involved in efforts to develop education for management. This article will trace and analyse the actions of two of these actors. The Committee on Education for Management, chaired by Lyndall Urwick, wished to unite the myriad training schemes offered by numerous ‘professional' associations into a general management education curriculum. But these associations, including the Office Management Association, resisted Urwick's attempts to forge a general management curriculum because they sought to maintain control of entry into their occupational groups

The 'layering' of management in postwar Britain: the case of the Office Management Association

The mid-twentieth century saw the creation of layers of managerial jobs in Britain. The increasing numbers of managers and a persistent degree of social closure at the top of organisational hierarchies led groups of managers to try to define specialist management functions as justification for holding organisational power. The Office Management Association was one such group. It promoted office managers' expertise in the efficient running of the administrative side of enterprises as a specialist managerial function worthy of a high place in managerial hierarchies. But specialisation was also fragmentation that would weaken the entire occupational group of all managers

'Small acts of cunning': Bureaucracy, inspection and the career, c. 1890-1914

The expansion of the managerial bureaucracy is a key organisational innovation of the late nineteenth century. Alfred Chandler has depicted this as a natural phenomenon triggered by geographic expansion and growing organisational complexity. The expansion of the branch networks of British retail banks contributed to their increased scale, but did not considerable scope for managerial choice over technology and organisation. A key development was the emergence of the bureaucratic career as the central form of control over individual performance and the presentation of the self. The development of the career was paralleled by the elaboration of 'small acts of cunning', organisational routines and reporting devices to monitor, track and discipline the individual over the long run

Women, age, and the managerial career in postwar Britain: Exploring the roots of the barriers to women's opportunities in management

This essay explores how the assumption that hierarchical position should be linked to a position-holder's age acted as a barrier to women advancing into management positions. The close and unquestioned association between an individual's age and what was considered an appropriate place on a bureaucratic hierarchy is one of the less often acknowledged barriers to women's upward mobility. The study focuses on Britain in the years following the Second World War, because the increased participation of women in the workforce during the war had engendered optimism about women's opportunities for long-term gains and advancement. Many women came out of the Second World War with a high degree of organizational capital that should have seen them advance into managerial positions. But as this study shows, through evidence gathered from archival as well as published historical documents, in the reality of the postwar world being the wrong age for the job constituted a significant barrier to women's advancement