ABSTRACT
Business felt the whip of competition in the 1980s, but the pain was tempered by the feeling that, whatever happened in specific policy areas, Margaret Thatcher’s government prized and respected the business leader’s function in society. Business – like most callings –requires a good deal more than the effort and intelligence measured by university degree courses. Movement towards the more economically successful norms of Britain’s overseas business competitors, it is hoped, may signal an improvement in the quality of British business leadership. The small numbers of graduates among the postwar business elite suggest that in the first half of the twentieth century, when that generation were recruited, business careers were a minority taste at British universities. This is confirmed by the scattered contemporary statistics: possibly only a third of graduates then opted for careers in business. The men at the helm of the top British businesses in the early 1990s are largely drawn from the intellectual cream.
