Nevil Shute: his role in the Easter Rising and his theory of ethics in Management and Organisation

Proposal to the Irish Academy of Management, Annual Conference 2016 ‘Ireland 2016: Re-imagining business and the role of ethics’. Nevil Shute: his role in the Easter Rising and his theory of ethics in Management and... [ view full abstract ]

Proposal to the Irish Academy of Management, Annual Conference 2016
‘Ireland 2016: Re-imagining business and the role of ethics’.
Nevil Shute: his role in the Easter Rising and his theory of ethics in Management and Organisation
David Weir
Professor of Intercultural Management
York St John University
Lord Mayors Walk
York YO31 7EX
d.weir@yorksj.ac.uk
01904 624624

KEY WORDS
Fictional imagination: The 1930s: Technology and Engineering Management: Management Ethics 
Nevil Shute: his role in the Easter Rising and his theory of ethics in Management and Organisation
Proposal to the Irish Academy of Management, Annual Conference 2016
Abstract
Importance and key contribution
This paper roots the ethical framework of Nevil Shute to contemporary discussion in the field of moral philosophy.
Theoretical Base
This paper builds on the personalist framework of John Macmurray, and the continental theorists like Bourdieu and Bergson, bringing the close textual analysis of literary criticism to contribute to a post-McIntyre and organizationally-relevant virtue ethics (Weir, 2015).
Methodological approach
The methodological approach is based on original historical documentary research and that of close reading of text.
Outline of paper
In this paper we examine the career and the ideas of a writer who was, at the time of his death, more widely read than any other writer of the period in the English language. His novels were best sellers in every land where English was spoken. Many were the basis of successful films. He spent an important part of his formative years in Ireland where his father Arthur Hamilton Norway was Head of the Irish Post Office at the time of the Easter Rising, in which Nevil Shute himself played an interesting and little-known part.
Nevil Shute Norway was best kn own as a writer of best selling novels, but he was much more than this alone. In fact, he followed more than one other successful career, as a qualified and highly respected aeronautical engineer, a leading figure in a new and dynamic technology, that of airship construction, as a successful entrepreneur, the designer of an important aeroplane type used by the RAF for many years and as an entrepreneur and technical and manufacturing innovator, the starter of his own business which he subsequently sold successfully. Finally he played an important role in the Second World War as a leading figure in the “Secret War” as a core member of the department of “wheezers and dodgers” a team drawn together by Churchill to provide off-centre and innovative solutions to technical and manufacturing problems of advanced and little understood ways of waging war through the application of leading-edge, fringe and downright weird science
Shute’s novels and his memoirs spell out an explicit account of organisation and an ethically-grounded global vision of a “far country” of the imminent future, that was neither a “land of lost content” nor a timeless visionary but imaginary utopia but a practical proposition of a place where hard work and honest partnership with nature and sustainable technology would reap its just reward for managers and ordinary people. In novels like “The Chequer Board”, “In the Wet”, “The Far Country”, “Beyond the Black Stump”, in which his Irish persona is given its fullest exploration, in “A Town Like Alice” and “Round the Bend” Shute explicitly foresaw the kind of multi-cultural , technically-grounded society Ireland and England have both become.
The first part of this paper positions Shute in his familial and cultural context as both a scion of the English ascendancy and as a young Irishman whose family were trapped in their official personae though their sympathies were much more complex and nuanced, and as a young petrol-head who had apparently easy access to both sides in the Easter conflict. His learning from these experiences became fodder for his eventual personal values and plot-lines and character creations in his popular novels. We trace the lines of association between his juvenile experiences and his eventual ethical compass by analysis of the plot-lines and characterisation o.f his fiction (Weir, 2011).
We review Shute’s explicit and implicit theories and models of organization and management and his experiences of public and private sector organization and the merits and weaknesses of each. We explore his understanding of the necessary interpenetration of organization and technology, leading to his accounts of organizational managers as tending to fall into two types the “starters” and the “runners” with different but equally necessary skills and competences. These ethical and organizational frames are introduced and analysed by examples from his published output, not only of novels but of memoirs, journalism and public speaking.
Implications
Shute is much more than of merely historical interest. All of his novels have remained continuously in print, more a half century after his death, indicating the contemporary relevance of his themes. Shute is amazingly relevant to the key ethical issues facing global society at the present time. His analyses of the interpenetration of personal and team values in the fulfilment of effective leadership by sergeant pilots in the bomber crews pursuing the bomber war against Nazi Germany, that forms the core of the narrative in “Pastoral” parallels the separate analyses of the social psychologist TT Paterson in his influential report undertaken for the RAF on “Morale in Bomber Crews”, that has influenced leadership development practices in the armed services and civilian organizations thereafter (Paterson, T.T. 1955;Weir, 2012).
His account of the central significance of metal fatigue in “No Highway”, like many of his novels, turned into a successful Hollywood movie predated the subsequent catastrophic crashes of the Comet Airliners by two years. His analyses of the linkage between the urban and individual ruination in the provincial manufacturing centres caused by corrupt and incautious bankers and financiers exposed in “Ruined City” could form the basis of a masterclass in the consequences of the ethic-free, market-smart activities of the financial communities in the most recent financial crash of 2007-2008 (Weir, 2016) .
Shute was pertinently insightful about the coming era of globalization and he explores these themes in a series of post-war novels. The rise of a new Australia founded on immigration in “The Far Country” and “A town like Alice”, the emergence of a Middle East economy in which airlines formed a dynamic element prefigures in “Round the Bend” the rise of the GCC states of Dubai and Bahrain. The need for an inter-cultural understanding as the basis of organizational coherence, foundational for a better world forms the basis of “The Chequer Board”.
Shute had a clearly elaborated framework of ethical judgement, explored in a number of contexts but always rooted in his wide and successful experience as an engineer working at the leading edge of manufacturing in advanced technological industries like airship design, where he took over responsibility from Barnes Wallis for the successful R100 airship, in aircraft design where he became the youngest Fellow of the Royal Aeronautic Society, and in the Secret War. He understood industrial organization from the inside and brought this insight into his fiction and stated succinctly in his memoirs. The clear line of explanation is rooted in his early experiences, especially in Ireland (Shute, 1954 ) He wrote as an engineer and a businessman, as a master of words, a proven master of action, and one who had personal knowledge of the places, people and situations that he described. His writings are as relevant today as they have ever been to the organizational and ethical challenges facing the societies that we have become (Weir, 1997) .

References

Paterson, T. T. (1955)Morale in War and Work: An Experiment in the Management of Men
Guildford,
Shute, Nevil. (1954) Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer. London: William Heinemann Ltd.,
Weir, David. (2016) The Ruined City: a novelist’s take on the 1930s depression: paper read at Cityscapes conference: York St John University
Weir, David, (2015) The personalist philosophy of John MacMurray as a basis for a universal ethical philosophy of management: paper given to the John Macmurray fellowship conference: York St HJohn University, October 2015
Weir, David (2012) Leadership in Literature: “Pastoral” by Nevil Shute: a man, a girl and a bomber crew ch 4 in Gosling, J. and Villiers, P. (2012) Fictional Leaders: Heroes, Villains and Absent Friends: Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan

Weir, David. (2011) Nevil Shute in the Easter Rising: friends present and absent: paper read to the Irish Studies Association conference, Liverpool University
• Weir D.T.H.: (2005a) The Norway in Nevil Shute: from Cornwall to Cape Cod by way of the Northern Seas of Leif Ericsson: Fourth Conference of the Nevil Shute Society: Cape Cod: October2-8 : 2005
• Weir DTH (2005b)Can there be a universal ethical basis for management? Some implications of Levinas: Conference on Levinas, Business, Ethics: Centre for Philosophy and Political Economy: University of Leicester: October 27-29:2005
Weir DTH (2003) Nevil Shute and the landscape of England: in Literary Tourism: ed: M. Robinson and H-C Andersen: Continuum:2003
Weir DTH (1997) The Ethical basis of management: in: Business Ethics: The Religious Dimension: E.H.Marshall, D Jenkins, D Weir, Zaki.Badawi, S.Howes: Bradford : 1997

Fictional imagination: The 1930s: Technology and Engineering Management: Management Ethics [ view full abstract ]

Fictional imagination: The 1930s: Technology and Engineering Management: Management Ethics