Post-war and Post-crisis Business Regeneration, 1945 to the Present: a Comparative Evaluation of Leadership Practice

My developmental paper is based on ongoing doctoral research in company records, local government holdings, and institutional histories which compares and contrasts the culture and organisation of British SMEs and German Mittelstand companies from the foundation of West Germany until the commencement of the Thatcher premiership. The research is already innovative in not only paying attention to companies which, although they underpinned economic growth, are infrequently analysed in any depth within the literature, but also in comparing them and the contexts within which they operated across two countries. The proposed article will deal with a more specific investigation in a single area of management, but with a greater temporal and geographic range: to investigate the ways in which business leaders rebuilt their companies in the aftermath of war over the past 75 years. Starting in Germany in 1945, it will review management responses to the destruction of war and the arrival of peace in the aftermath of conflict there, in the Balkans, in Northern Ireland, and in other regions in a bid to understand whether particular management responses have delivered the most effective blueprint for subsequent management success. The offers the potential of determining a replicable theory of post-war management practice.