The Anglo-American Council on Productivity: 1948-1952 British productivity and the Marshall Plan

The United Kingdom's postwar economic recovery and the usefulness of Marshall Plan aid depended heavily on a rapid increase in exports by the country's manufacturing industries. American aid administrators, however, shocked to discover the British industry's inability to respond to the country's urgent need, insisted on aggressive action to improve productivity. In partial response, a joint venture, called the Anglo-American Council on Productivity (AACP), arranged for sixty-six teams involving nearly one thousand people to visit U.S. factories and bring back productivity improvement ideas. Analyses of team recommendations, and a brief review of the country's industrial history, offer compelling insights into the problems of relative industrial decline. This dissertation attempts to assess the reasons for British industry's inability to respond to the country's economic emergency or to maintain its competitive position faced with the challenge of newer industrializing countries.;Useful primary sources included the records of the U.S. Foreign Assistance Agencies in the U.S. National Archives, Treasury and Board of Trade documents in the Public Record Office in England, and the records of the Federation of British Industry and Trades Union Congress preserved in the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick in England. Most of the productivity team reports are in the University of Wisconsin Library, Madison. Interviews with James Silberman, Alexander King, and others proved valuable.;Four chapters review Britain's industrial decline, the difficulties in implementing the Marshall Plan, and an interviewee's first-hand survey report of Britain's industrial weaknesses. Three chapters describe the evolution of the AACP, U.S. visits of the productivity teams, and the recommendations of the team reports. Another chapter outlines the increasingly intense American productivity drive in Britain and Western Europe.;The dissertation concludes that much of the responsibility for Britain's industrial dilemma must be attributed to the management style of owner-managers in that country's largely craft-oriented manufacturing industries.