The Politics of Entrepreneurship

Our panel considers how intellectuals, policymakers, management thinkers, and business leaders proposed new business practices and methods as solutions to the political and social problems of the postwar United States. From the corporate adoption of “decentralization” in the 1950s to the pursuit of job training and “entrepreneurship” programs into the 1980s, new ideas about how private institutions should function, and what problems they could solve, abounded in the postwar era. New business practices were proffered as not only economically sound, but also as supporting American social goals like merit, economic opportunity, and democracy. These ideas transformed American economic life, while also representing a shift in popular thought about the respective roles of business and government. New business practices were presented as offering nongovernmental solutions to social problems, and our panel places them among the broader political trends toward conservatism in the same era. By exploring how business practices were offered as the solutions to social problems, our panel shows how postwar business reinvention encouraged a broader reimagining of political economy in the United States.