Work and Authority in Industry: Managerial Ideologies in the Course of Industrialization

Work and Authority in Industry analyzes how the entrepreneurial class responded to the challenge of creating, and later managing, an industrial work force in widely differing types of industrial societies: the United States, England, and Russia. Bendix's penetrating re-examination of an aspect of economic history largely taken for granted was first published in 1965. It has become a classic. His central notion, that the behavior of the capitalist class may be more important than the behavior of the working class in determining the course of events, is now widely accepted. The book explores industrialization, management, and ideological appeals; entrepreneurial ideologies in England's early phase of industrialization; entrepreneurial ideologies in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russia; the bureaucratization of economic enterprises; and the American experience with -industrialization. This essential text will interest those in the fields of political science, industrial relations, management studies, as well as comparative sociologists and historians.

About the Author

Reinhard Bendix (1916-1991) was professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He was the recipient of many awards and honors throughout his lifetime, including being a fellow for the Fulbright Program, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Woodrow Wilson International Center Scholar. He belonged to the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy for the Advancement of Science.