Abstract
SINCE the late Samuel Courtauld's paper on government and industry was published in the Economic Journal in April 1942, the question of the relations between industry and government has steadily grown in importance. It is now widely realized that this question is bound up with that of the relation of industry as a whole with society, and of the internal relations of employers and employed, whether managers or operatives. Increasing concern with management and attempts to raise its standard in industry have emphasized the complexity of these relations and inter-relations, as has experience with the nationalized industries and the new public boards which have been brought into being in Great Britain. With all these questions the papers collected under the title “Ideals and Industry”* are concerned, and in the six or seven years since they were first delivered they have lost nothing of their force. They are as relevant to our immediate problems as to the conditions obtaining during the war years when they were prepared; industrial relations are at the root of the problem of securing the greater efficiency and higher productivity on which Britain's economic recovery depends, whether we think primarily of the external relations with government or the internal relations of man with man. Co-operation with, and in, industry should be our first concern; and at bottom the issue is one of human relations and of human understanding.
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Incentives in Industry. Nature 164, 893–895 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/164893a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/164893a0