Applying American Organizational Sciences in Europe and the United Kingdom

Abstract

Until the 1970s, much of European thought, research, and action in the organizational sciences came across the Atlantic from the United States. Graduate students and scholars in the fields of management and organizational behavior from England, France, Holland, West Germany, and many other countries, internalized American concepts of “participation,” organizational development, and so forth, without seriously considering their transplantation and applicability to European culture. This was in parallel with a general increase in American influence in Europe, after World War II, in all aspects of life—economic, cultural, and particularly entertainment. By the mid-1970s, however, it was becoming obvious that many of the concepts in American organizational sciences were irrelevant, particularly in their American format, to the problems, concerns, and cultures of organizational life in Europe. Although many of the conceptualizations and action plans from U.S. organizational and management scientists have “face validity,” they have not proved to be the radical alternatives that Europe needed to solve its most pressing problems.