UK Business and Government Tensions: Towards a More Functional Relationship

The handwringing over sleaze accusations and the fuss over Peppa Pig referenced as an example of a major business success are just two recent manifestations to what I’ve sensed to be a long-term, awkward, and dysfunctional relationship between business and government in the UK. The public and private sectors do not seem capable of developing a productive relationship, even though a good relationship seems obviously valuable for advancing the national economy and its social benefits.  

You can dismiss my views since I am an academic and an American, and the US certainly has its examples of dysfunctional relations between public and private sectors, such as during the Trump administration. But as an American academic who has spent many years in the UK, the cultural differences seem remarkable.

Comparatively speaking, the UK has a more skeptical if not anti-business culture in relation to the US. For example, in the US, business leaders are often very promising candidates for office. They are viewed as people who have done real work, had to hire and fire people, get things done, and who are capable of ‘running government more like a business’, meaning more efficiently.  In the UK, business is more often viewed as relatively wasteful, inefficient, more expensive, and even a corrupting influence on government.

Many of the best graduates from US educational institutions go into high paying jobs in business and industry. Many of the best graduates from the top UK educational institutions go into one or another area of public service, such as a career politician. I’m not sure if the UK even has a degree equivalent in stature to the Harvard MBA, for example.

Maybe I am wrong, but if this is a generally valid comparison, at least something should be done by business schools in the UK, even if no one else takes responsibility for mending this relationship. Productive and positive relations between the public and private sectors must be of benefit to all. In the past, this might have been a role played to some degree by the gentlemen’s or private members’ clubs in London, but something more needs to be done.

Might this problem be a great theme for a seminar series, if not a research project or research program at a major business school? Perhaps some joint programme supported by the UK’s Economic and Social Research (ESRC) council could fund illuminating research in this area. If this is being done or has already been done, then it is under-achieving and needs to be ratcheted up or revisited. If not, I think it would be a valuable contribution.