ROWNTREE, Benjamin Seebohm

Seebohm Rowntree was a director and then chairman of the Rowntree company, and the moving spirit behind both the Rowntree conferences and the Management Research Groups. 

Rowntree was born in York on 7 July 1871, third son of the Quaker chocolate maker Joseph Rowntree and his second wife, Emma. He was educated at the Bootham School in York and then Owens College, Manchester where he studied chemistry but left without taking a degree. In 1889 he joined the family business, initially as a chemist but later, at his own request, moving into roles dealing with labour management. He married Lydia Potter in 1897. 

In 1897 the firm was transformed into a limited company, Rowntree & Co., and Rowntree became a director and was put in charge of the newly established labour department. This itself was an innovation at a time when few companies had much knowledge of or interest in labour management. Rowntree, like his contemporary and competitor Edward Cadbury, had few theories to guide him, and built up his labour management practices based on a combination of his own Quaker beliefs, common sense, and view that good labour relations and efficiency were in some way linked. 

These beliefs also carried through to Rowntree’s work outside the company. Inspired in part by the example of his father, who was deeply concerned about issues such as poverty and social justice, in 1897-8 Rowntree carried out a meticulous study of poverty in York, in which investigators visited every working-class household in the city. The results were published as Poverty: A Study in Town Life in 1901, and had a considerable impact. Senior members of the Liberal Party, including David Lloyd George, came to York to meet Rowntree and discuss his findings and possible solutions to the problem of poverty.  

Rowntree carried out two further studies in 1935 and 1951, published as Poverty and Progress and Poverty and the Welfare State, respectively. Both had a considerable impact on social policy at the time. 

In 1915, following the outbreak of the First World War the Ministry of Munitions established an industrial welfare department to look after the interests of workers employed in war work. David Lloyd George was the first Minister of Munitions, and it was at his insistence that Rowntree was invited to head the department. Rowntree’s team succeeded in improving working conditions in many factories despite the constraints of wartime. Urwick and Brech (1949) credit Rowntree's work during this time with doing much to inform popular opinion on the necessity for industrial welfare and the role that personnel management could play in this regard. 

Rejoining the family business in 1918, Rowntree succeeded his father as chairman in 1923. The experience of the Ministry of Munitions had stimulated his interest in efficient management and exposed him to new influences, including British management thinkers such as Edward Elbourne and American scientific management. In 1919 Rowntree travelled to Boston to meet progressive American businessmen such as Henry Dennison and the brothers Edward and Lincoln Filene. During this visit he met the Australian sociologist Clarence Northcott, whom he invited to join the management team at Rowntree.  

Inspired in part by what he had seen in America, Rowntree returned to Britain and began a series of major initiatives in disseminating management ideas: the Rowntree conferences, begun in 1919, and the Management Research Groups, launched a few years later. He remained personally committed to and very closely involved with both these initiatives throughout his career. Rowntree was also closely involved with the National Institute of Industrial Psychology, serving on its executive committee from 1921-49, and as chairman from 1940-47. 

During the 1920s Rowntree & Co. prospered, becoming the second largest chocolate maker in the UK after Cadbury's, and one of the largest in the world. Through the 1920s, Rowntree relied on being able to fund his industrial welfare activities through achieving greater production efficiency. But by the end of the decade, Cadbury was extending its lead over Rowntree, and not even a revamp of the sales department in 1926 could halt this trend. The onset of the Great Depression in 1929 hit both companies hard, and Rowntree approached Cadbury with an offer of a merger. When Cadbury refused, Rowntree restructured his own firm and used the resulting savings to invest heavily in marketing and promotion. Fitzgerald (1995) notes that Rowntree’s revival was very largely on this new focus on marketing. By 1933 Rowntree's profits were rising once more. Following the Second World War Rowntree set in motion the first moves towards a major overseas expansion, and then retired as chairman shortly before his death.  

Rowntree was made a Companion of Honour in 1931. He died in York on 7 October 1954. 

Rowntree’s reputation as a social reformer is ably summed up by Asa Briggs (1974), but it is worth noting that his strongly held views on social reform also influenced his views on management. Rowntree argued consistently that firms had to make profits, and that managers were the people best placed to make the decisions that would earn profits; during a discussion at one Rowntree conference he slapped down a trades union representative who had been demanding more worker representation, telling him to ‘call off your dogs’. Although he introduced a profit-sharing scheme in 1922, by his own admission he remained ambivalent about co-partnership, viewing it as a good thing in theory but unable to see clearly how to make it work in practice. Yet his relationships with labour were very good, and Fred Hawksby, his senior shop steward, was a regular attendee of the conferences and, in the discussion sessions, not backwards about coming forward. 

Rowntree’s views on management are best summed up in The Human Factor in Business: Experiments in Industrial Democracy (1921). His philosophy throughout this book is one of communication and consultation with workers, rather than outright partnership. He argued for treating workers not as partners in the technical, legal sense, but as fellow voyagers on a journey towards the same destination. 

Industrial welfare is not a fad or a hobby for managers of a philanthropic bent, he says. Rather, it is ‘the only way in which business can be carried on successfully under modern conditions’ (Rowntree 1921: 148). He rejects the argument that industrial welfare is too expensive, pointing out that the same argument could be urged against any innovation, and repeats his own belief that industrial welfare measures will offer companies a substantial return on investment through improved efficiency. The alternative, he says, is industrial warfare and revolution. Writing in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and the threatened spread of communism, Rowntree tells his readers that industrial welfare is the only sure bulwark against industrial chaos. Meet the workers’ grievances, deal with them fairly, and the motivation for unrest will die. Good wages and stable jobs are a minimum pre-requisite, but businesses should also look carefully at measures such as profit-sharing and co-partnership to increase employee participation and commitment.  

These sentiments can be taken to mean that Rowntree regarded industrial welfare as primarily in defensive measure, a matter of ‘bread and circuses’ to keep the workers happy so they would not go on strike. This could lead to Rowntree’s sincerity being questioned. Our view is rather different. As Lyndall Urwick (1956: 157-8) puts it, ‘some of the experiments which [Rowntree] initiated and applied with outstanding practical success still read like “moonbeams from the larger lunacy” to the more conservative element among business managers.’ Rowntree was well aware that some of his fellow industrialists regarded his ideas with scepticism, and chose to appeal to their self-interest as well as their ideals. As for ideals, they are summed up well in the following passage: 

In conclusion, I would suggest that industry should be regarded, not primarily as a means of promoting the material welfare of groups or individuals, but as a great national service, endeavouring to realize three ideals. These are: 

1. Industry should create goods or provide services of such kinds, and in such measure, as may be beneficial to the community.
2. In the process of wealth production, industry should pay the greatest possible regard to the general welfare of thecommunity, andshould pursue no policy detrimental to it. 
3. Industry should distribute the wealth produced in such a manner as will best serve the highest ends of the community.

(Rowntree 1921: 156) 

Contemporaries were in no doubt about the sincerity or power of his beliefs. William Wallace, for many years Rowntree’s assistant, describes as having a ‘constant unswerving sense of service to his fellows; not only in vision, but in the steady application of that vision to everyday life. He had a strong and persistent sense of social purpose and social obligation. He loved his fellow men; not in any generalised, warm and woolly way, like so many of us; but in dedication to their service as individual fellow creatures’ (Wallace, 1954). Lyndall Urwick, whose mentor Rowntree was for many years, sums him up as ‘the British management movement’s greatest pioneer’, and ‘a greater influence than any other business man who has lived in our time towards guiding his country to a wider, wiser and more enlightened view of the task of business leadership’ (Urwick 1956: 135, 138). 

Rowntree’s ideas about duty and purpose drive many of his contributions to the lecture conferences. Even those that are largely about process, such as his 1924 talk on controlling production, make the point that production has a purpose, to serve the country and help the economy grow strong. In March 1920 we find him arguing: 

Our idea of the fundamental function of industry is false. Ask any hundred business man why they are in business, and ninety-five would answer, ‘To make money.’ But in almost every one of the lectures during this week-end, emphasis has been placed on the fact that we ought to conceive of industry as a vitally important function in human service. Until we get that conception firmly fixed in our minds, we shall never achieve an industrial system which will meet the needs of the day, or which will solve the difficulties and allay the unrest and the bitterness which are such marked characteristics of industry at the present time. 

Everyone has a duty to honour the men who fought and died, Rowntree tells his audience, and business has a role to play in making Britain into a ‘land fit for heroes’. Later in 1920 at Balliol College he declares that ‘we are now, in very truth, engaged in the colossal task of rebuilding the world.’ In 1922 he appeals to employers to step up and show true leadership: 

I appeal to employers for intense sympathy with the men they are leading. That is not sentimentality, but a feeling with the men; looking, for example, on the problem of unemployment, not mainly from the point of view of the balance sheet but from the point of view of the individual who is affected. Be Captains of Industry, not just employers; be leaders whom your men trust and love, and be worthy of their loyalty. 

Major works 

Poverty: A Study of Town Life, 1901. 

The Land, 1913. 

The Human Needs of Labour, 1918. 

The Human Factor in Business: Experiments in Industrial Democracy, 1921. 

Industrial Unrest: A Way Out, 1922. 

Poverty and Progress, 1941. 

(with G.R. Lavers) Poverty and the Welfare State, 1951. 

Brech, E.F.L. , The Evolution of Modern Management, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2002. 

Briggs, A., Social Thought and Social Action: A Study of the Work of Seebohm Rowntree, 1871-1954, London: Greenwood Press, 1974. 

Fitzgerald, R., Rowntree and the Marketing Revolution, 1862-1969, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 

Harrison, B., ‘Rowntree, Benjamin Seebohm’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. 

Urwick, L.F., The Golden Book of Management, London: Newman Neame, 1956. 

Urwick, L.F. and Brech, E.F.L. The Making of Scientific Management, vol. 1, Management in British Industry, London: Management Publications Trust, 1949; repr. Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1994. 

Wallace, W., ‘B. Seebohm Rowntree, In Memoriam’, 1954, http://www.guise.me.uk/rowntree/seebohm/wallace.htm  

Witzel, M., ‘Rowntree, Benjamin Seebohm’, in M. Witzel (ed.) Biographical Dictionary of Management, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2001. 

Lectures:  

‘Factory management’, 1919, Scarborough 

‘Introduction’, 19 March 1920, University College, Durham 

‘Training for industrial administration’, 20 March 1920, University College, Durham 

‘The practical outcomes of the conference’, 22 March 1920, University College, Durham 

‘Introductory talk on the objects of the conference’, 15 April 1920, Balliol College 

‘The practical outcome of the conference’, 18 April 1920, Balliol College 

‘The future of British industry’, 26 February 1922, York 

 ‘A study of American efficiency methods’, April 1922, Balliol College 

 ‘Opening address on the increasing claims which modern industrial conditions make upon administrators’, 21 September 1922, Balliol College 

‘Controlling production within the factory’, 5 April 1924, Balliol College 

‘Some essential conditions for the future prosperity of British industry’, April 1927, Balliol College 

‘The danger of organising too mechanically and losing touch with the personal element’, September 1927, Balliol College 

‘Introductory talk’, September 1928, Balliol College