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Rulers of the Ruhr: Leadership and Authority in German Big Business Before 1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Elaine Glovka Spencer
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History, Northern Illinois University

Abstract

The rise of heavy industry and its managerial elite in the German Empire and in the United States provides stimuhting parallels and contrasts. Professor Spencer discusses the social constraints under which a professional management class developed in the German coal, iron, and steel industry during the generation before World War I. Ranking distinctly below the landed aristocracy and the governmental bureaucracy (both of which they would gladly have emulated), and preoccupied with the maintenance of order in the midst of rapid economic and social change, German managers used their power and influence to sustain and manipulate existing systems of authority, and came to play no broader role in the development of their commonwealth than did their American counterparts.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1979

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