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.

摘要

第二次世界大战后，在削减成本的压力下，美国国防部领导人从私营企业招募了管理人员，以帮助他们管理冷战国家安全国家。1950年左右，当国防部门的领导人开始采用管理教育计划和研究成果用于军事时，管理成为陆军的重点干预领域。通过陆军管理学院的故事，本文探讨了管理专业知识如何成为美国军官培训中的常规和普遍组成部分。越南战争后，许多军事领导人对“管理主义”表示怀疑，并质疑在军队中援引企业管理专业知识的适当性。然而，到那时，管理技术和概念已经成为陆军教育体系中扎根的一部分。本文显示，商业专业知识在军事领域比通常公认的早了几十年。陆军中管理教育的历史表明，管理专业知识在非商业环境中拥有的权威和影响力的范围是商业专业化历史的一个重要但未被研究的方面。