British Capital and the Productivity Drive

Abstract

The productivity agencies consistently drew attention to the importance of management in increasing productivity in Western Europe and the UK. Naturally the first criticisms came from the AACP. The Management Accounting productivity team report stressed the importance of management; after, ‘. . . very careful consideration, the greatest single factor in American industrial supremacy is the effectiveness of its management at all levels’ and, ‘Good management is a fundamental requirement of efficient business’ (AACP 1950a: 6, 64).1 The AACP team on education for management also stressed the importance of good management. In Appendix I of their report they quoted from 25 AACP productivity team reports which all emphasised the role that American executives and managers played in the quest for a higher productivity growth rate. The Report stated that virtually all productivity teams up to that point in time had claimed that productivity per labour year was higher than in the UK. Two principal reasons were cited, first the climate of opinion which regarded maximum effort by all workers as a prerequisite to a good material standard of living and secondly the quality of management (AACP 1951a: app. I, 1).