Influence of American Labor Management and Management Education in Germany after World War II: Human Relations and American-Style Management Education Methods

Copyright: © Yamazaki T. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Post World War , European enterprises and industries, as well as their overall economies, were developed by deploying and adapting US technology and management methods; this practice was also observed in Germany around the same time. American management methods were introduced and implemented under the US-led productivity movement. The major American management methods implemented in Germany were those for management education and human relations as an American labor management method. In Germany, however, many factors influenced the introduction of American management methods. This paper analyzes influence of human relations and management education in Germany after the war. It first discusses the deployment of human relations in relation to the problems of transformation of labor relations and those in the management system. It next considers the deployment of American management education in relation to universities ’ role in management education, eligibility criteria for executive management, and the manager promotion system in German enterprises. These discussions explain the influence of American management methods and the various factors that restricted the deployment of American-style methods in managemen