AbstractThe aftermath of the Second World War saw massive efforts to promote morale management across British industry. While these new discourses and industrial practices have often been explained in terms of the development of expert knowledge, this article places them at the center of the politics of social reconstruction. While the proper management of morale was linked to greater productivity, this article argues that it was often their assumed benefits regarding social cohesion and harmony that mattered most. It shows the ways in which government officials, management experts, and social scientists mobilized the perceived links that the war had forged among morale, collective sacrifice, and democratic citizenship and thus turned the workplace into a privileged site for the manufacture of consensus.
British Industry and US–UK Economic Diplomacy During the Second World War
