in 1922 Rockefeller donated funds to Princeton University to establish an Industrial
Relations Section, theWrst academic unit in an American university dedicated to
research on HRM practices in industry. During the 1920 s a number of business
schools also introduced courses on personnel management. Institutional labor
economists were the largest contingent of researchers and teachers on labor
management, but a small cadre of academics from industrial psychology and
commerce were also active in theWeld (Kaufman 2000 b).
The development of HRM in other countries during the 1920 s was slower, more
piecemeal, and less strategic. Industrialization, for example, was less advanced or on
a smaller scale in a number of countries. Australia is a case in point. In the mid- 1920 s
there were perhaps six full-time welfare workers in the entire country (Hinder 1925 )
and only during the Second World War production boom did labor management
departments start to appear (Wright 1991 ). Even in countries with large-scale
industry, HRM lagged behind. One person estimated that the development of
labor management in Britain in the early 1920 s wasWve years behind America
(Fryer 1924 ). Also illustrative is the remark of Mary Fledde ́rus, a Dutch welfare
manager (quoted inJournal of Personnel Research, 1 / 1 : 175 ) who stated in 1922 ,
‘Broadly speaking, welfare work in Holland seems to me, as in other countries, to
have arrived at a transition state. I have the impression that it chieXy looks to
America for the lines on which it will go on working.’ In a similar vein, Englishman
Harold Butler ( 1927 : 107 ) observed, ‘The American literature on the subject [indus-
trial relations] probably exceeds that of the rest of the world put together.’
To be sure, there were advances in HRM research and practice outside America
in the 1920 s. German academics and industrial researchers, for example, pioneered
a newWeld calledArbeitswissenschaft(science of work) which explored subjects
such as ergonomics, fatigue, and job satisfaction (Campbell 1989 ). Next to the USA,
Germany was also the most active site for work in the newWelds of industrial
psychology (called ‘psychotechniks’) and industrial sociology. In Britain, little
work was pushed forward on labor management or industrial psychology and
sociology in universities during the 1920 s, in part due to the tepid interest of the
British in scientiWc management principles (Guille ́n 1994 ). Burns ( 1967 : 198 ) notes,
for example, that British academics had an ‘ideological bias against business and
against internal studies of business undertakings.’ Some vocational training and
applied research in labor management was sponsored, however, by the govern-
ment, the Institute of Welfare Work, and technical schools. Limiting the develop-
ment of HRM in not only Britain but all of Europe was, in addition, the fact that
these countries were more advanced than the USA with regard to labor legislation,
social insurance programs, and trade unionism, all of which reduced the oppor-
tunity and incentive for European employers to take a more individualized and
strategic approach to labor management (Rodgers 1998 ; Kaufman 2004 a).
Perhaps the country outside the USA that saw the most signiWcant advance in
HRM practice during the 1920 s was Japan. Japan was an early and enthusiastic
24 bruce e. kaufman