In February 1944, the world’s newspapers were flooded with the news that Charles E. Bedaux, one of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful industrial consultants, had committed suicide while under FBI custody in Miami, Florida. Here, readers were told, Bedaux was detained under a charge of treason for collaborating with the Nazis during the war.
Reminding readers that Bedaux had made a fortune out of his ‘Bedaux System of Human Power Measurement’, reporters, in particular Janet Flanner of ‘The New Yorker’, also reminded readers that Bedaux was already famous for being a friend of the British royalty before the war. What’s more: they noted that the Duke of Windsor (formerly Edward VIII) and Wallis Simpson had married at Bedaux’s magnificent French château in summer 1937.
But who, really, was Charles E. Bedaux? Was it true, as Flanner’s biopic asserted, that his vaunted ‘Bedaux System’ was merely ‘pseudo-scientific’ and ‘did not differ much from the old Frederick Winslow Taylor shop-management system of the [eighteen] nineties’?
While conspiracy theorists and journalists have long-deployed a phantom version of Bedaux in a variety of fantastic international plots involving various British royals, Hollywood actors and top Nazi officials (Adolf Hitler included), until now there has existed no well-researched account of Bedaux’s life, nor his influence as a consultant. Moreover, it will be suggested that Bedaux’s demonised reputation has not just warped literature in relation to consultants, but also in relation to broader narratives related to the history of technology, business, and management.
This seminar will explore the fact that, in the Bedaux case, the truth really is stranger than fiction. But this has not stopped fanatics and even forgers working to make the opposite the case. It is time to set the record straight and work out where to go next.