For whom does the bell toll: a political analysis of criticisms of the Hawthorne studies

Purpose This paper aims to analyze the political background of the Hawthorne criticisms, positing that the political atmosphere of the 1940s, influenced by the decline of the new deal liberalism and the rise of the conservative coalition, stimulated scholars to challenge the Hawthorne studies. Design/methodology/approach Primary sources used in the guise of archival commentaries, journal articles and other published works (books and book chapters). Secondary sources are offered to provide additional insight and context. Findings The findings show that politics unnecessarily discredited Mayo. As a result, contemporary scholars failed to recognize Mayo’s work as an important part of the basis for modern management theory. Research limitations/implications The purpose of the research is to look into the political context of the Hawthorne studies to understand how management practice and research is impacted by ongoing political issues. Originality/value To date, no work has fully accounted for or understood the political climate of the time in considering the criticisms of the Hawthorne studies. By more fully understanding the political context, scholars can reevaluate the weight they place on the then criticisms of the Hawthorne studies.

The Rise of Political Action Committees

This book explores the origins of political action committees (PACs) in the mid-twentieth century and their impact on the American party system. It argues that PACs were envisaged, from the outset, as tools for effecting ideological change in the two main parties, thus helping to foster the partisan polarization we see today. It shows how the very first PAC, created by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1943, explicitly set out to liberalize the Democratic Party by channeling campaign resources to liberal Democrats while trying to defeat conservative Southern Democrats. This organizational model and strategy of “dynamic partisanship” subsequently diffused through the interest group world—imitated first by other labor and liberal allies in the 1940s and 1950s, then adopted and inverted by business and conservative groups in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Previously committed to the “conservative coalition” of Southern Democrats and northern Republicans, the latter groups came to embrace a more partisan approach and created new PACs to help refashion the Republican Party into a conservative counterweight. The book locates this PAC mobilization in the larger story of interest group electioneering, which went from a rare and highly controversial practice at the beginning of the twentieth century to a ubiquitous phenomenon today. It also offers a fuller picture of PACs as not only financial vehicles but electoral innovators that pioneered strategies and tactics that have come to pervade modern US campaigns and helped transform the American party system.

A Tale of Two PACs

This chapter traces the diffusion of the PAC concept from the left to the right of the political spectrum in the late 1950s, with the formation of conservative electoral groups such as the Americans for Constitutional Action (ACA) to counter liberal ones like the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA). By the early 1960s the business community had cast off its earlier resistance to overt electioneering, with the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) forming the Business-Industry Political Action Committee (BIPAC) to channel campaign resources to favored congressional candidates. Though they initially sought to bolster the conservative coalition, these groups soon embraced a dynamic partisan strategy focused on the Republican Party, seeking to shift it rightward much as labor and liberal groups sought to push the Democratic Party to the left. This reactive process culminated in the presidential election of 1964, a contest to which the roots of modern partisan “polarization” are often traced.

When Business Is Not “Businesslike”

This chapter explores the initial resistance to the PAC concept within the business community and among conservatives more generally in the 1940s and 1950s. Though major business groups like the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and United States Chamber of Commerce had not entirely ignored elections to this point, they concentrated their energies following World War II on lobbying and publicity campaigns promoting “free enterprise,” while criticizing labor and liberal PACs as coercive, collectivist, and antidemocratic. They also placed faith in the “conservative coalition” of Republicans and Southern Democrats to protect their interests, reflecting their strong belief that both parties should and could promote business aims. As fears grew that labor had successfully “infiltrated” the Democratic Party, however, conservative activists urged business groups to be “businesslike” and respond to labor electioneering in kind. Business leaders thus began to contemplate a partisan electoral counterstrategy centered on the Republican Party.

The time-spaces of austerity urbanism: Narratives of ‘localism’ and UK neighbourhood policy

This paper examines the impact of urban policy change through an attention to shifting feelings about time and place among those affected by such changes. The focus is the shift from ‘Neighbourhood Renewal’ under the UK Labour Government (1997–2010) to ‘localism’ under the Conservative Coalition Government (2010–2015), as part of its programme of austerity. The article draws on longitudinal research with policy officials and resident-activists in two neighbourhoods in one UK city and examines their narratives about policy change and wider shifting feelings about time and place. From an official perspective, discourses and practices of localism were embraced to an extent, but uncertainty was also present. From the perspective of resident-activists, the changes in policy were experienced as a loss of past services and support, a sense of pessimism about the future, and fragmenting and inequitable trajectories for different localities. Temporalities of crisis were also apparent in responding to the material needs of residents undergoing deepening poverty. The failure of the localism discourse to provide everyday meaning can be seen as an example of the incoherent and fragmented nature of contemporary austerity urban governance. A time–space perspective, in particular focusing on how both policy actors and citizens use narrative to organise their spatial and temporal experiences, therefore offers resources for the wider analysis of urban governance.

Polexit w świetle wyników badań opinii publicznej

Polexit in the Light of the Results of Public Opinion Polls In 2015, presidential and parliamentary elections took place in Poland and, as a result, the pro‑European parliamentary coalition of Platforma Obywatelska (Civic Platform) and Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe (Polish People’s Party) lost power after eight years of governing. The winning conservative coalition consisted of three parties: Law and Justice, Solidarity Poland and Jaroslaw Gowin’s Agreement party. From the very beginning, on various occasions (relocation of immigrants, reforms of the judiciary, rule of law) there have been disputes between the new authorities in Warsaw and the EU institutions (European Commission, European Parliament, Court of Justice of the European Union). The concept of polexit appeared in public discourse as one of the possible options for resolving these conflicts. The author of this article undertook the task of analyzing the results of research on the attitude of Polish society to Poland’s membership in the European Union in search of the answer to the question whether in the light of these results polexit is possible and whether it is not possible to repeat the British scenario that led to Brexit.

American Evangelical Politics During the Cold War

During the decades of the Cold War, belief and power blended in ways that better integrated Protestant evangelicals into the mainstream American political culture. As the nuclear age corresponded with the early Cold War, evangelicals offered an eschatological narrative to help make sense of what appeared to many to be an increasingly dangerous world. At the same time, the post–World War II anticommunism that developed during the presidencies of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower made room for evangelical interpretations that supported their good-versus-evil rhetoric. Evangelist Billy Graham and other evangelical leaders consistently referenced Cold War events and promoted Christian nationalism while at the same time calling on Americans to turn to God and away from sin. Evangelical missionaries, who had long interpreted the world for fellow believers in the pews back home, were agents advocating for American values abroad, but they also weighed in on American foreign policy matters in sometimes unexpected ways. By the time the Cold War world order had fully emerged in the 1950s, cold warriors were fighting the geopolitical battle for influence in part by promoting an “American way of life” that included religion, allowing evangelicals to help shape the Cold War consensus. White evangelicals were more ambivalent about supporting the civil rights movement that challenged the inclusivity of that consensus, even though civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. made the case for civil rights using moral and spiritual arguments that were familiar to evangelicalism. As the long sixties brought divisions within the country over civil rights, the war in Vietnam, and the women’s rights movement, evangelicals participated in the political discussions that captivated the country and were divided themselves. By the 1970s, conservative evangelicals helped to create the Religious Right, and a small group of liberal evangelicals began to contest it. The Religious Right would be more successful, however, in defining political evangelicalism as the culture wars extended into the 1980s. Conservative evangelicalism matured during the Reagan years and become an important part of the conservative coalition. Even as the Cold War ended, the political networks and organizations that evangelicals formed in the second half of the 20th century, both conservative and progressive, have continued to influence evangelicals’ political participation.

Jansa will consolidate Slovenia’s rightward shift

Significance Slovenia has a new four-party conservative coalition government, comprising the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), the Modern Centre Party (SMC), the New Slovenia-Christian Democrats (NSi) and the Pensioners’ Party (DeSuS). Under their coalition agreement, SDS has seven of 16 ministries plus the premiership, SMC four, NSi three and DeSuS two. Impacts The rise of SDS will consolidate the trend in Central Europe towards national conservativism and deepen the east-west divide in the EU. Efforts to clamp down on illegal immigration will exacerbate tensions between Ljubljana and Zagreb. There is a chance a proposed package of supply-side reforms will stimulate the economy as the downturn in Europe hits Slovenian exports.

Guilt by Innuendo: The GAO’s Political Attack on Agency Training Programs, 1940

In 1940, the Government Accounting Office (GAO) released to Congress a slashing attack on in-house training programs in executive branch departments and agencies. The GAO had always used a strict constructionist approach to evaluate the legality of agency spending on training: Was it explicitly authorized by Congress? However, this report was much more of a broad-ranging political and ideological attack on training programs, including accusations of Communist influence and–contradictorily–influence by the Rockefellers. The report can be seen as one of the major attempts by the Congressional conservative coalition to stem the tide of modern personnel administration in the federal executive branch.