Urwick, Lyndall Fownes

Lyndall Fownes Urwick (3 March 1891 – 5 December 1983) was a British management consultant and business thinker. He is recognised for integrating the ideas of earlier theorists like Henri Fayol into a comprehensive theory of management administration. He wrote an influential book called ''The Elements of Business Administration'', published in 1943. With Luther Gulick, he founded the academic journal ''Administrative Science Quarterly''.

Biography

Youth and military service

Urwick was born in Worcestershire, the son of a partner in Fownes Brothers, a long-established glove-making firm. He was educated at Boxgrove Primary School, Repton School and New College, Oxford, where he read History.

He saw active service in the trenches during the First World War, rising to the rank of Major, and being awarded the Military Cross. Though he did not himself attend the military Staff College at Camberley, his respect for military training would affect his outlook on management in later life.

Rowntree's

After the war, he joined his father's business of Fownes Brothers. He was then recruited by Seebohm Rowntree, head of the York chocolate company and progressive philanthropist. Urwick's role involved assisting the modernisation of the company, bringing to bear his own thinking, which had two main influences. One was the work of F.W. Taylor with its concept of '' scientific management'', and the other, counterbalancing it in its emphasis on the humanity of management was Mary Parker Follett, for whom he had great admiration.E.F.L. Brech, Andrew Thomson, John F. Wilson, ''Lyndall Urwick, Management Pioneer: A Biography'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010)

Urwick's own prolific writings on management truly began in this period. At this time, Urwick, along with his colleague at Rowntree's, Oliver Sheldon, became active members of the Taylor Society.

International Management Institute

His growing reputation as a British thinker on management and administration won him appointment in 1928 as Director of the International Management Institute in Geneva.

The Institute may have proven short-lived, closing in 1933, Charles D. Wrege, Ronald G. Greenwood, and Sakae Hata, 'The International Management Institute and Political Opposition to its Efforts in Europe, 1925-1934' ''Business and Economic History'' (198
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/ref> but it provided Urwick the opportunity not only to lecture widely but to produce his books ''The Meaning of Rationalisation'' (1929) and ''The Management of Tomorrow'' (1933).

Urwick also produced and disseminated the first European study of Elton Mayo's research at the Hawthorne Works in Chicago while at the IMI.

It was also this time that he became particularly keen to promote the writings of Henri Fayol to an English audience.

Management consultancy

Having returned to Britain, in 1934 Urwick established, with John Orr of Bedaux Britain, a management consultancy named Urwick, Orr & Partners (UOP).Michael Ferguson, ''The Rise of Management Consulting in Britain'' (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002) UOP's slogan was ''Profit on Principle: A British Service for British Business in the application of the Principles of Direction and Control.''Lyndall Urwick Society, ''The Urwick Orr Partnership, 1934-1984''
(privately printed, Lyndall Urwick Society, 2007).Michael R. Weatherburn, 'Scientific Management at Work: the Bedaux System, Management Consulting, and Worker Efficiency in British Industry, 1914-48' (Imperial College PhD thesis, 2014)

From the outset, UOP instituted a copy of the Bedaux System and Bedaux Unit, the ''Point System'', in hundreds of factories and offices across Britain and further afield.

Orr left the consultancy in the 1940s, putting Urwick in effective control of the company in the postwar period. Along with AIC, P-E and PA Consulting, UOP came to be one of the 'Big Four' leading Western European consultancies in the 1950s.

A particularly notable UOP consultant was E.F.L. Brech, with whom Urwick wrote the ''Making of Scientific Management