Enterprise Culture

Conceptual Overview

Formed in Britain while the Conservatives were in opposition in the 1970s, the notion of enterprise culture flowered with the election of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister in 1979. Concerned about economic decline, she took steps to increase the competitiveness of the private sector and to decrease a perceived drain on the public purse. Along with shrinking the state, Thatcher promoted enterprise culture at every level of society. These actions were intended to increase prosperity.

Enterprise culture was to be nurtured by organizations and professed by individuals. Enterprising individuals are creative, risk taking, and responsible, understanding that no one owes them a living. Therefore, to become enterprising, welfare recipients were expected to give up the culture of dependency and get a job; the middle class were to stop passively relying on their employers for a paycheck and were instead to work actively to increase productivity, thereby adding value. At the top of the social hierarchy, elites were encouraged to give up the aristocratic values of the gentry, replacing anticommercialism with entrepreneurialism. For their part, organizations were to become enterprising by empowering employees to take the initiative rather than to wait for instructions. Firms and small businesses were to embrace enterprise culture to boost productivity, increase UK competitiveness, and foster the creation of wealth. Public and voluntary organizations were to adopt enterprise culture in order to cater more effectively to their clientele. Enterprise culture reflected core beliefs of Thatcherism, and continued to thrive under Tony Blair's New Labor.

On a more specific level, enterprise culture has at least two distinct applications. First, it is associated with administrative reform and privatization in the public sector. Thatcher literally privatized many national industries and, in a different sense, also “privatized” other areas such as health, culture, and education. In these sectors, government was no longer to be seen as the sole provider of funds. Organizations such as museums, universities, and the National Health Service were pressed to run themselves in the manner of private businesses, to use marketing tools to serve “customers” (rather than students or patients), and to seek supplemental funding from private sources. Along these lines, Thatcher reformed the civil service, introducing market forces. Russell Keats argues that the formation of enterprise culture represents a “de-differentiation” of previously distinct modes of organization, as public and nongovernmental organizations come more closely to resemble business firms. Government put into place a number of incentives to encourage, or force, these organizations to adopt business principles. This created serious debate, both within and outside these organizations, as to whether market forces should be introduced into sectors not traditionally measured by economic yardsticks.

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