Making managers in the U.S. military: the case of the Army Management School, 1945-1970

Abstract

ABSTRACT Under pressure to cut costs after World War II, leaders in the U.S. Department of Defense recruited managers from private industry to help them run the Cold War national security state. Management became an area of focused intervention in the Army around 1950, when leaders across the defense establishment began adopting management education programs and research for use in the military. Through the story of the Army Management School, this paper examines how management expertise became a routine and pervasive component in the training of American military officers. After the Vietnam War many military leaders expressed suspicion about ‘managerialism’ and questioned the appropriateness of invoking business management expertise in the armed forces. However, by this time management techniques and concepts had become a firmly rooted part of the Army education system. This article shows that business expertise was widely pursued in the military decades earlier than is usually acknowledged. The history of management education in the Army demonstrates the extent of authority and influence that management expertise held in non-business contexts – an important but understudied dimension of the history of business professionalization.