Courtauld Inquiry (1943-1947)
In 1937, the philanthropist, Lord Nuffield, expressed his desire to fund the creation of a new postgraduate residential college at Oxford which would be devoted to the study of both engineering and accountancy.
While the form of the offer proposed by Nuffield did not match the University’s desire, it was still seen as a major opportunity to provide some coherence within social studies at Oxford. Nuffield’s offer was discussed between Alexander Dunlop Lindsay (Vice-Chancellor of Oxford) and the economist William Beveridge (then Master of University College), the latter clearly disapproving the idea of Nuffield’s project on the grounds that it was not sensible to focus exclusively on the type of research being suggested. Eventually, Lindsay convinced Nuffield to fund a college just concerned with social studies, to the exclusion of engineering.In May 1940, the Warden of Nuffield, Harold Butler, proposed to the College Committee a project which would look at the problems of post-war economic and social reconstruction. At this stage, G.D.H. Cole and Lindsay (also members of the Committee) suggested that Butler’s proposal was too focused on a post-war context, and should rather deal with the changes then taking place in the economy, such as the effects of the redistribution of population. During the following months, Cole and Lindsay went in search for financial support for their project from the government. By April 1941, funding had been secured, and under Cole’s enthusiastic direction, work began on examining the economic and social prospects of Britain’s main industrial regions (see Young and Lee 1993: 142). Over the next two years, Cole invested the majority of his time and energy in this effort. However, the purpose of this Social Reconstruction Survey was soon being criticised by senior members of the University and by some of Cole’s colleagues at Nuffield who questioned its practicality.
The “failure” of the Survey did not help with the promotion of social studies at Oxford.
Shortly before Cole’s resignation in 1944, he received a letter in March 1943 from Samuel Courtauld, Visiting Fellow at Nuffield and wealthy textile industrialist, expressing his doubts about the dictum “bigger is better”. Courtauld offered to partially finance an investigation which would aim to collect evidence among firms and their accountants on the issue of the growth of firms. In 1943, it was decided that a six-month pilot investigation should be undertaken. This became known as the “Courtauld Inquiry” and was placed under a special committee called the “Courtauld Committee” within the College Committee at Nuffield.[16] The theoretical investigation—concerned with the optimum size of a firm—was conducted by Josef Steindl, J.R.L. Schneider and Arthur Bowley and worked out of the OIS.In May 1944, the first report of the Courtauld Committee was sent to Courtauld who particularly liked the statistical investigation conducted by Andrews, ‘because it dealt with Courtauld’s data obtained from the [Courtauld] accountants’ (ibid.: 149). As a result, Henry Clay, who had taken over from Butler as Warden of Nuffield in 1945, agreed with Courtauld that Andrews should continue his statistical investigation. The latter went one step further, proposing to Clay and Courtauld that he expand his study to the clothing and shoe industries. Over the next two years, Andrews, along with the help of the OIS, carried out this additional investigation with the assistance of his collaborator, Elizabeth Brunner. Although Courtauld died in 1947, funding for the project went on until 1949 and led Andrews to publish his results in Manufacturing Business.
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