Competition as a vocation. The social and cultural history of West German managers after the postwar boom

这项研究项目探讨了竞争和竞争力作为西德公司中上层管理人员从20世纪60年代到80年代社会文化习惯的基本要素。这项研究结合了社会、文化和商业史的方法，调查了快速转型时代经理们不断变化的工作文化：当欧洲战后繁荣在20世纪60年代末70年代初结束时，德国协调市场经济的模式及其浓厚的社团主义、等级制度和对公司的终身认同受到了压力。1968年的文化剧变，以及“后现代主义”多元化、个人化、全球化的基本趋势，以及日益增加的不安全感，大概也影响了德国管理者的职业模式、价值观和日常做法。这项研究旨在检验这样一种假设，即在这一变革时期，德国公司及其高管在招聘政策、内部组织、职业晋升、薪酬方案和工作习惯方面经历了一个日益“竞争”的过程。一方面，我们将分析职业指南、管理文献和管理者撰写的自传文本中竞争的语义，另一方面，我们将使用两家公司(拜耳股份公司和拜耳汽车公司)的案例研究，调查公司内部的组织基础设施和日常竞争做法确实发生了变化，以及变化的程度。

This research project deals with competition and competitiveness as essential elements of the sociocultural habit of managers in the middle and upper strata of West German companies from the 1960s to the 1980s. Combining methods of social, cultural, and business history this study investigates the changing job culture of managers in an age of rapid transformation: When the European post-war boom came to an end in the late 1960s, early 1970s, the German model of a coordinated market economy with its strong tradition of corporatism, hierarchy, and lifelong identification with the company came under pressure. The cultural upheaval of '1968' as well as the basic trend towards 'postmodernist' pluralization, individualization, globalization, and increasing insecurity presumably also affected the career patterns, values, and everyday practices of German managers. The study sets out to examine the hypothesis that German companies and their executives during this period of change underwent a process of increasing 'competitivization' with respect to recruitment policy, internal organization, career advancement, salary schemes, and working habits. On the one hand we will analyze the semantics of competition in career guides, management literature, and autobiographical texts written by managers, and on the other hand we will use case studies from two companies (Bayer AG and Bayerische Motoren Werke) to investigate, how and to what degree the organizational infrastructure and everyday practices of competition within the companies did change.