Creating the “American Way” of Business: Evidence from WWII in the United States

Abstract

World War II was arguably one of history's largest shocks to the US economic and production system. In this paper, I argue that “managerial technology” played a key role in shaping US WWII production and its capacity to defeat some of the most advanced economies in the world. The large-scale diffusion of innovative management practices to US firms involved in war production acted as a technology that put them on a higher growth path for decades. Moreover, it made US managerial practices internationally distinctive and created the “American Way” of doing business—exported worldwide in the aftermath of the war.