CEOs at war: Great War service and the formation of Britain’s business elites

Military service, particularly during wartime, is shown to affect executive careers by providing training and experiences that shape career progression and mobility. The Great War had a profound effect on the British economy and society, but its impact on Britain’s corporate elite is less understood. Using a new dataset of 232 business leaders and a prosopographical method, we examine how the Great War affected executive careers. We find that this cohort was active at the top of the UK corporate economy well into the twentieth century. Rapid career progression and mobility were most prevalent among business leaders whose service was in civil administration, as was social diversity. Military service was less associated with career mobility or social diversity. These findings highlight the importance of wartime innovations to civil administration as accelerators of executive careers, deepening our understanding of mechanisms that led to the professionalisation of management in interwar Britain.