British Management Writings Before the First World War

In the two decades prior to World War I, a number of British writers and consultants had begun to address the problems of management in the modern world. Although they were aware of similar developments in America, where scientific management was becoming the latest business fashion, these writers sought to develop distinctly British approaches to management. Writers such as the engineers Joseph Slater Lewis, A.J. Liversedge and F.G. Burton, the consultants Edward Elbourne and J.W. Stannard, and the accountant Lawrence Dicksee laid stress on the need for a methodical approach to business management, the need to be inclusive and to motivate workers to see the company's goals as their own, and above all the need for more and better training for would-be managers. The six volumes in this set represent the best of British management writing from this period, and show the directions in which British management thinking might have gone had not World War I and the subsequent "Americanization" of British industry intervened.
Today, they remain an important example of an alternative way of thinking about and practising management, and demonstrate the plurality and diversity of management thought.