ABSTRACT
Robert Owen was an entrepreneur who became one of Britain’s most successful business leaders during the Industrial Revolution. Paradoxically, he was also one of the most important figures in modern socialism, who helped to found the trade union movement and the cooperative movement. His utopian views of economics and society were falling into disrepute even in his own lifetime, but his successes as a manager remain outstanding. His methods of personnel management were nearly a century ahead of their time, and in the early twentieth century both British and American management writers saw him as a major influence and role model for leadership. His views on business ethics, concerning both the relationship between employers and workers and the relationship between business and society, remain of primary importance.
