Modernization, Industrialization and Development

In the previous chapter we outlined and discussed the historical conditions of possibility, and thus the material and discursive precursors, of the fields of international and cross-cultural management: Western science, anthropology and imperial commercial and organizational practices. This chapter looks at how these knowledge systems became entwined and inter-related through the discourses of modernization, industrialization and development that emerged in the US post-World War Two period. We shall argue that these discourses reflected the manifold economic, military, political and cultural concerns of the United States, the new dominant power at this juncture in history. These contextual factors and associated discourses would find direct expression in the early classics of ICCM: Harbison and Myers’ (1959) Management in the Industrial World: An International Analysis, and Kerr et al.’s (1960) Industrialism and Industrial Man: The Problems of Labor and Management in Economic Growth. We offer a critical analysis of central aspects of these texts.