TURBINE D
Objectively: There are 14 directors on the board of Rolls Royce. Nine of them have a social science background, one is a chemist, one an an academic engineer, two are vocational RR lifelong engineers. One is from management of United Airlines in the U.S. who gained a business degree.
So we have two guys here who could do any job on the shop floor and do it well. The most academically qualified is Colin P Smith.
Board of Directors - Rolls-Royce
So how come Colin P Smith does not have his hands on the reigns?
Now we go into my subjective reasons why after WW2 the engineers were not well regarded by the guys who had the money: the City of London and the Bankers.
1. The allies won WW2. The UK relaxed.
2. The UK education system after the WW2 was tripartheid. There was the private sector, the academic schools for about 10% of public school kids and another school for the other 90% of kids who did not get the scholarship. 5% of the population went on to university. The privately educated kids were the same mix...but they had a lot of input..this is the "oxford accented" and "old boy" network that led the UK after WW2. Of course a lot of them were not particularly gifted individuals but they had the right accents and talked well.
3. The education system has been a "political football" since 1965. The net effect is that we do not have the support structure in engineering.
4. Culture: beliefs and values. Engineering was not valued in many of the public academic schools and the facilities in these schools was poor to promote craft skills. So engineering became unfashionable.
5. The routes upward for talented shop floor workers were through the "technical colleges" and back in the 1960s and 1970s this was a route many sought and won. Colin P Smith is one such example. Entered at age 18 and went through this system. Looks like he hit the very heights of what was possible too..lots of solid balck type after his name.
6. Rewards. The pay for someone like Colin P Smith at age 18 would have been something like £38 per week. The team of 20 or so practical shop floor engineers he led would have been around £300 per week. This would have been for about a 45 hour week.
7. This was in the UK only. If you look at the UK it is on the edge of Europe and an island of some 55 million people. After WW2 the only competitor the UK had to manufactured goods was the USA..and we still have an export/import charge that hangs on today as a remnant.
8. Business culture. As one young commercial manager said to me when I was around 30 years old: "The trick DERG is to sell people fresh air..thats the secret". That memory remains with me.
9. As the post war years rolled on the City of London became a haven for companies from the USA who wanted a foot in the European market and were keen to adopt the methods of the USA in "wealth creation" The UK was an ideal place to make things because the labour was relatively cheap and the new methods were automated. Beacause the UK is an island the economy and labour markets were effectively trapped and the business managers took advantage. The "suit" became the icon. The coverall was altogether frowned upon.
10. Economics Because of the reasons above and the oil price increase the UK was bust by 1972. In Feb 1971 RR went bust but was restarted with tax payers money just as Airbus was founded. The City of London recovered and continued investing in service industries. Engineering was seen as "high risk" as the Japanese and German products became popular.
11. The net effect: the UK became a finance clearing house. If you wanted to be successful in life then engineering was not high on the list. That is why today we have only two or three people on the board of Rolls Royce Aerospace who are true engineers.
This subjective analysis SHOULD cause plenty of you to comment, all replies welcome