Naval Leadership and Management 1650–1950 by Helen Doe and Richard Harding (eds)
The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2012, £60 (hb)
xiv + 206 pages, with 3 tables, bibliography, index
ISBN 978-1-84383-695-7
This volume has a double function. First of all it is a Festschrift to the distinguished career as teacher and writer of Michael Duffy, who retired in 2009 (as far, that is, as an historian ever can). But it strives to escape the accusation commonly levelled, often with justice, at such collections, that they are suffused with red light from the acceleration of the contributors away from any supposed common centre. Hence the decision to make this volume also a study of the interconnected roles of leadership and management in the Royal Navy during the years in question. The chance was taken of a conference in September 2009, marking Duffy's retirement, to begin to concentrate minds, and this volume is the further distillation.
The two introductory chapters, one by Roger Knight, the second by Richard Harding, present the two sides of the book. Knight offers us an engaging survey of Duffy's career, including a valuable bibliography. It is free from the usual dull pieties, and offers some refreshingly sharp comments on a couple of former colleagues. Harding shows the relevance of the themes of leadership and management to Duffy's work, and also their importance. The Second World War, he suggests, has perhaps been rather overexploited for source material, and – once ‘herostudies’ (in particular with regard to Nelson) are discounted – the earlier period offers much relevant raw material that has been previously ignored. He argues historians can subject ideas of the two themes to ‘crucial, in-depth empirical testing … in real contexts’ (p. 25).
Ten papers follow, divided into four groups: ‘Leadership – place of the hero’, ‘Leadership and organisational frictions’, ‘Management capability and the exercise of naval power’ and ‘Evolution of management training 1800–1950’ (though really goes only to 1939). One cannot discuss all the papers, but should at least note certain organizational continuities going right though the whole period: what struck this reviewer in particular are ‘the complex network within which the leader operated’ (Harding, p. 45); the essential nature of ‘adequate and guaranteed logistics, a firm administrative structure and clear lines of command’ (Cole, p. 61); and the importance of delegation, economy, teamwork and experience, (Morriss, pp. 102f, 104). Here one notices a certain similarity: problems are regarded as things to be tackled successfully. That of course reflects a long-standing and admirable tradition in the Royal Navy. In short, we have what might be regarded as a very naval collection.
However, there are hints of less remediable friction. One paper, for instance, suggests how beneficial reforms could compromise initiative (Walton, p. 155). And both the Harding introduction and his later paper on the 1740s at least touch on how leadership can fail to cope with circumstances. Here it is interesting to compare with another volume from 2012 that goes even further, Christopher Grey's Decoding Organization (Cambridge), a study of Bletchley Park, which was at least partially naval in personnel and structure. They show some overlap in approach; notably, Grey writes of ‘the possibility of grasping organization as both entity and process by virtue of historical distance’ (p. 18). But one also finds Grey – an organizational theorist – referring to what he sees as the narrowness that comes from excessive burrowing in the papers, or ‘Archivism’ (p. 247), and would probably not be echoed by all the contributors to the Festschrift (and certainly not by this reviewer). More acceptably, he emphasizes that modern organizations – above all large ones – are not just complex, but have a characteristic messiness. It is thus likely he would find the Festschrift somewhat too positivist. Grey argues that organizational studies tidy up reality too much, and would doubtless say the same about administrative histories, too. He quotes with approval a description of Bletchley Park organization by one of the managers (Frank Birch) as ‘a patchwork of extemporized expedients’ (p. 265).
One might conclude that the Festschrift authors were quite right to stop in 1939, even if not for the reason offered. Not only was British administration in the Second World War on a much larger scale than previously, including in 1914–18, but required a larger adjunct of nontraditional staff, and also – a key methodological point to Grey – can still (if only just) be addressed partly through oral testimony. The corollary would be that in a war where one speedily identifies great (or infamous) leaders, leadership had become less important than bureaucratic machinery. On the other hand, it could be that what we have been dealing with is a changing dialectic over the centuries, where the balance swings according to one's academic predilections. Either way, there remains much to do – including many more fascinating archives to look at – though we must thank Doe, Harding, the contributors and, of course, Duffy – for pushing us on our way.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00253359.2013.767563
© C. I. Hamilton