Leadership Succession in British Business in the 1950s

Abstract

Abstract For almost forty years, especially from the late 1950s until the late 1980s, entrepreneurship became the ‘Cinderella’ of business history. Indeed, writing in 1977, one American business historian commented that the neglect of individuals, in favour of the bureaucracies of which they were part, meant that ‘much American economic and business history has become a bore.’ Designed to shock the business history establishment, this statement high lights the extent to which the study of organizations has left the personal characteristics of business leaders and interpersonal relationships, which comprised the inner workings of the ‘black box’ of the firm, distinctly grey (Livesay 1977: 415). Twelve years later the same scholar found little diminution in business historians’ fascination with the organization of institutions, a tendency that led to the continued neglect of business leadership (Livesay 1989).