Executives in Europe
By RICHARD BAILEY
HE idea that management as a profession was rr
.1 invented by the Harvard Business School is now part of the mythology of management. It fits in alongside acceptance of James Burn- ham's thesis that a managerial revolution, creating a caste of non-business-owning man- agers in America and Western Europe as power- ful as the Commissars of the Soviet Union, was a stage in the evolution of the affluent society. Indeed the sudden burgeoning of interest in man- agement in post-war Britain at the Adminis- trative Staff College at Henley, the British Insti- tute of Management and elsewhere, made it look as though industry had suddenly realised that although it conducted its affairs in prose, it was in a less fluent style than that flourishing on the other side of the Atlantic. The setting up of the European Productive Agency and the dispatch- ing of teams to Detroit, Denver and Des Moines to see American know-how in its native haunts -all added to the mythology of New World Man- agement.
Britain was not alcne in this attitude. Teams from the Continental countries also went off to learn about American methods. Nobody knows what happened to all the information picked up by these inquiring minds in the United States. Some teams came hot-foot back to their factories and started managerial revolutions of their own. But these were probably the excep- tions and it is by no means the case that the same techniques are now used throughout West- ern Europe and America. There are still great variations between what is done in the different European countries and while some American practices are followed in some firms they have not been anything like universally adopted.
The changes in the economic situation of some European countries in the past decade have caused some questioning in Britain as to whether they had discovered superior techniques or were simply operating under government policies better suited to the stimulation of economic growth. The German miracle and the greatly improved industrial output of France and Italy; the founding of the European Common Market and the serious decline in 'British exports, especially of cars to the United States, have all emphasised our insular situation. A new word, coined in America and marked for export, `technocrat,' has been muttered increasingly in British managerial circles. Can'it be that while we have been studying American examples the Europeans have discovered something better of their own?
Some of the answers to this question are given in a recently published study of Man- agement in Europe by David Granick,* of the University of Wisconsin. On the whole his find- ings are reassuring without giving any grounds for complacency. The concept of what managers should do, where they can be recruited and how they fit into society differs from one country to another. In Britain, and to some extent France and Germany as well, management is not a professional subject for study with a precise content. Certainly it is useful for managers to have some knowledge of mathematics, engineer- ing, cost accounting, and even economics, but it is equally possible to be a manager without knowing anything about these things. In Ger- many, where the ideal of owner-entrepreneur is very strong, top management is regarded as a sort of mystical calling with Power, Prestige and Profit as its Lorelei. In France, where the technocrats have come to their greatest pitch of perfection, it is the academically-trained in- tellect that is regarded as the ideal qualification. In England neither calling nor systematic edu- cation is regarded as an absolute essential. Here the specification is for the well-rounded man coming from a background which will have moulded his character. The sort of man who can be told unpleasant things without losing his temper and whose loyalty can be trusted im- plicitly.
The routes by which these varied types come to be managers are, not surprisingly, quite dif- ferent. In Germany a degree in economics or engineering is accepted as a natural starting point. After that, all formal business training is organised by industry itself. This reflects the view that university professors are not regarded as having anything to teach managers already launched in their careers. Business' teaching is too serious to be left to the professors. Those thought to have the ability to reach member- ship of the Vorstand, the board of full-time directors of the firms, are pushed ahead inside the" organisation and eventually sent off for a brief training course at Baden-Baden. The rest are set to learn more routine tasks and remain in middle management throughout their working lives. This early segregation, of the elite is a very marked feature of German industry.
In France a thorough academic training is re- garded as the only possible basis for a career in industry or in the higher civil service. The
Cadres—the top level of employees whether in management or the professions—all have the
same sort of background. Predominantly middle-
class in origin they attend one of the schools of engineering known as the Grandes Ecoles, of Which the Polytechnique is the most grand.
In business and the professions the line between the graduates of the Grandes Ecoles and lesser establishments is fairly rigid and it is only the very exceptional man from the latter who gets beyond middle management.
The way to the summit after selection also • THE EUROPEAN EXECUTIVE. By DaVid Granick. (Wcidenfeld and Nicolson, 30s.) reflects the very considerable differences in custom and attitude in the two countries. In Germany the emphasis is on picking managers young, wherever they come from. There is no strong prejudice in favour of engineers as in France, or against them as in England. Never- theless the German manager is essentially a pro- fessional always ready to move on as oppor- tunity offers. The members of the Vorstand have a collective responsibility in managing the affairs pf their company. Each man has respon- sibility for a particular department. each has his own speciality, but the decisions are taken as a group. The French system of managerial control is quite different. The President- directenr-general is the undisputed head of his firm. He takes decisions, he gives the orders and he chooses his assistants. The amount of delega- tion that takes place varies, but on the whole organisation charts are disliked, and committees regarded as imposing undue limitations on the power of the president. The tradition is Napoleonic, especially in family firms.
One of the most odd post-war developments in Western Europe has been that the sudden paision for 'planification' in France and the competitive laissez-faire of the German miracle seem to have produced equally beneficial re- sults. To some extent this difference in method reflects the attitudes and abilities of the men running industry in the two countries. For the academically-trained grands commis planning represents the only logical way of securing ex- pansion. The key men in the plan are the ex- ecutives of the firms who are members of its sub-commissions and whose interests are at stake. They are exactly the same type as the civil servants and administrators on the other side of the table. The French predominance in the secretariat of the European Economic Com- munity in Brussels has the same explanation. The brilliant French Eurocrats there could equally be in top management or administration, they have the right qualifications and back- ground. All are old boys of the Grandes Ecoles.
In Britain the image of the manager as the practical man with no great use for theory bring- ing an honest air of amateurism into manage- ment is still widely accepted. There is no doubt that today it is out of date for many firms in many industries. But at the same time the idea of management as a profession which can be made the subject of systematic study is very slow to catch hold. Parkinson's Law,' which is the only new view of administrative problems to have caught the public imagination, has scared many companies off from setting up or expand- ing staff organisations or from buying advice outside. That such fears are not altogether justified is borne out, by the fact that American firms established in Britain spend more between them on research and development than the whole of British industry combined. Perhaps the most encouraging fact to emerge from compari- son with practices abroad is that strange things happen there too. The customs and attitudes found in industry are nowhere all in the direc- tion of efficiency, enterprise and increased pro- duction. The doubt remains, however, that our particular attitudes are more of a hindrance than most.
Previous page
