Publications
Publications
- Summer 2021
- Oxford Review of Economic Policy
The Origin and Development of Firm Management
Abstract
This paper examines the historical origin and diffusion of management practices. Despite their centrality in the modern world, the concepts of ‘management’ developed fairly recently. Only with the Industrial Revolution, due to the increased firm size, owners needed a management structure to coordinate activities across different plants. Management soon became the subject of numerous studies in economics, sociology, and psychology to maximize firm productivity. The first large-scale programme of management practices diffusion was developed in the U.S. during the Second World War: offering such training to U.S. firms involved in war production boosted their performance for at least 10 years. After the Second World War, the U.S. exported its management principles to Europe, where they have large and persistent effects on small firm productivity, and to Japan, where they interacted with the local economic conditions and originated the ‘kaizen Japanese management’, which aims at ‘continuous improvement’ in firm performance.
Keywords
Productivity; Kaizen; Management; Management Practices and Processes; History; Performance Productivity; Technology
Citation
Giorcelli, Michela. "The Origin and Development of Firm Management." Oxford Review of Economic Policy 37, no. 2 (Summer 2021): 259–275.