The Puritan Gift

Book excerpt: Financial Times Top Ten Business Book of 2007! The Puritan Gift traces the origins and the characteristics of American managerial culture which, in the course of three centuries, would turn a group of small colonies into the greatest economic and political power on earth. It was the Protestant ethic whose characteristics--thrift, a respect for enquiry, individualism tempered by a need to cooperate, success as a measure of divine approval--helped to create the conditions which led to America's managerial and corporate success. Thus, the authors contend, the drive, energy and acceptance of innovation, competition, growth and social mobility, all have their origins in the discipline and ethos of America's first wave of European immigrants: the Puritans. And, the authors warn, as Americans distance themselves from core values which produced their nineteenth and twentieth century business and economic successes, they endanger the basis for their prosperity and security.