As the chair of the Washington Development Corporation, he played a strong role in attracting Nissan to build their first European factory in the UK.
[2][4] When McClelland was not at school, he worked in his father's stores and in later life boasted that he could cut precisely a pound of butter or cheese from a large block.
However, his academic skills at Leighton Park were identified, and he was awarded a Ruskin scholarship at Balliol College, Oxford, to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics.
McClelland being a Quaker was a conscientious objector, so instead volunteered for the Friends' Ambulance Unit, serving first in North Africa before moving to the front in Europe.
[2] When the war ended, McClelland stayed on to support the relief work for thirteen months, in which time he visited the Nuremberg trials and heard Martin Niemoeller speak.
[9][10][11] On his return to Britain, McClelland started his delayed scholarship at Balliol College, and achieved a First Class Masters within two years instead of the normal three.
[2][1][12] In 1948, after completing his degree at Oxford, he joined the family business of Laws Stores in the position of managing director, with his father, Arthur, becoming the company chairman.
[13] McClelland looked at how they could improve Laws profitability, including should they go down the discounter route, take the company upmarket, move into offering non grocery stock or into different service industries.
[13] The company did attempt to the move into the fast food trade by taking on a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise, but the site proved to be wrong.
[13] McClelland did however improve their warehousing issues, opening a new warehouse, while freeing up space by outsourcing their frozen storage to Amalgamated Foods of Durham.
However McClelland had seen scepticism amongst his colleagues at Balliol, which he joked about later on life saying he used to get invitations to college dinners to prove he didn't have two heads and a tail.
McClelland chaired the society, but had appointed prominent academics Paul Hannika, Pierre Tabatoni [fr] and Tom Lupton to help provide guidance and the necessary contacts to improve the journal.
[6] A key early highlight for the journal was McClelland securing the paper The business school: a problem in organizational design by Herbert A.
It will do this primarily through the quality of the education it gives to its postgraduate and post-experience students and its research activity will also contribute by advancing relevant knowledge and its application.
[25] This was radical for the time, and McClelland had to integrate the differing beliefs, from those had worked at the former Manchester School of Management and Administration, which included Douglas Hague, John Morris and Alan Pearson; Luptonites who had been influenced by Tom Upton and Enid Mumford, and those who were swayed by Stafford Beer.
[30] After returning to the north east in 1977, McClelland became a visiting chair at Durham University, working with the Business School, as well as with the departments of Engineering and Geography.
[37] McClelland served on many national and local government advisory bodies, as well as those of independent institutions, including: In 1977, he was appointed Chairman of the Washington Development Corporation by the Secretary of State for the Environment Peter Shore, replacing Sir James Steel.
McClelland in this role pushed for the development of Nissan's first European factory at Washington, and was part of the superviory committee set up to negotiate the investment.
[49] He would later go on Quaker and International Fellowship of Reconciliation organised delegation trips, first to the USSR in 1952 and then China in 1952 and 1955, followed by the US in 1957, afterwards having to overcome smears of being a communist sympathiser.
We developed our standing partly by appointing honorary officers – the Lord Lieutenant of the county as President, two established local philanthropists, William Leach and Catherine Cookson, as patrons, and a dozen well-known figures connected within the region, as Vice-presidents.
[55][56] In 1995, contrary to his Quaker beliefs against gambling, McClelland became a member of the North East Advisory Panel of the National Lottery Charities Board.
[59] McClelland met his first wife, Diana Avery Close, while they were volunteering as an aid worker in Germany after World War II and were married in 1946.