ABSTRACT
Business and workplace cultures may be understood as a resource which provided actors with a rationale for action that rarely prescribed or precluded alternative strategies. This chapter discusses the extent to which senior managers called upon cultural imagery and associations in managing both manual and supervisory grades. It offers an example of a major industry that managed internally-generated reorganization of production technologies and processes without obstruction from labour or evidence of managerial incompetence. In the protracted debates on British economic performance during the third quarter of the twentieth century, two important themes have recently emerged. The first concerns the influence of cultural values over the behaviour of employers, managers, and employees as they formed relationships, engaged in production, and bargaining over the fruits of output. The second is the impact that such values and relationships had on the performance of manufacturing industry in Britain and elsewhere.
