During the period W.W. II, due to the capital assistance of the Marshall plan France experienced a high rate of growth. Productivity missions that were dispatched from France to the United States played a very important role in this growth.
The purpose of this paper will be to analyze the role of the French productivity missions to the United States. This analysis will inclued 4 sections. Section I will be an analysis of the organization of these missions. In this section, I will present a clear analysis of the impetus behind the actions of the missions, the 3 different forms that the missions took, and the participants in the missions themselves.
The second section will include a look at the origin of the missions, the preparations for the missions and their activities in the US. The contents of this section are based on an interview that I conducted in 1992 with R. Donn. R. Donn was the person at the French embassy in Washington DC engaged in bringing the missions to the US. According to Mr. Donn, plans to visit the US were initiated by the French side. This section will also include a look at the process by which the missions, with the aid of American capital assistance, were realized.
The third section will include an analysis of the actual condition of American management that the productivity missions saw. In this section, I will describe the American management methods that appeared in the reports of the missions, American management that was observed by the missions and the American management as was seen by the laborers. Each participant praised the American management system as being very efficient.
The fourth section will be an examination of the changes that the missions brought about in France's economy and management. According to ananalysis of the results of a survey of the managers who participated in the productivity missions, many of them after returning to France, applied what they had learned in the US. The missions were very fruitful.
As a next step, it would be interesting to analyze, one by one, how the techniques that the industries that participated in the missions learned were applied in each instance.

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