Andrew Popp

Information flow in automotive supply chains - identifying and learning to overcome barriers to change

Improving competitive advantage to the first‐tier echelon of automotive supply chains is enabled via the requirement for transparent information flows in both the order‐generating and order fulfilment channels. However, four generic areas are identified which are barriers to improving performance. These are cultural (is it in our interests?); organisational (does the supply chain have the right structure?); technological (what common format and standards are required?); and financial (who pays the bill?). How these barriers may be overcome to the benefit of all “players” in the chain is discussed, plus benchmarking of current best practice. Exemplar supply chains are identified as noteworthy for the emergence of supply chain “product champions”. These have the vision, authority, and drive to implement new systems and set in place mechanisms to minimise regression to old working practices.

Information flow in automotive supply chains – present industrial practice

The automotive industry acts as a barometer and flagship of the national economy. First tier suppliers are essential enablers in the success of the sector. Here we identify present practices concerning information flow as perceived by typical first tier suppliers. Observations are made via “top pain analysis” facing an individual supplier and “quick scan analysis” on a range of automotive value streams. Major information flow weaknesses encountered in real‐world value streams are highlighted. To conclude, we show the “well‐trodden path” established for performance improvement as enabled in real‐world supply chains.

The presence of entrepreneurial opportunity

Beginning in a critique of conceptualisations of entrepreneurial opportunity dominant in economics and entrepreneurship studies we draw on both the heterodox economics of G.L.S. Shackle and perspectives from phenomenology to recast entrepreneurship as an imaginative act of ‘making present’ unfolding through time and lived experience. We develop both the critique and the alternative perspective through a double reading of the case of T.E. Thomson and Co., a merchant house established in Calcutta in 1834.

Life Cycles, Contingency, and Agency: Growth, Development, and Change in English Industrial Districts and Clusters

Responding to a recent special issue of Environment and Planning A on decline in mature industrial regions, the paper summarises and presents recent historical work on English industrial districts and regions. The paper argues that historical methods, informed by cognate social sciences, allow us to place the concepts of contingency and lock-in on a firmer footing. The paper presents a nondeterministic life-cycle model of industrial districts.

Using History in the Creation of Organizational Identity

Abstract Organizations frequently draw on history as a resource, for instance when attempting to establish or maintain identity claims. However, little has been done to review the advantages and problems of such use of history and it is not clear how using history impacts on the appreciation of history itself and, ultimately, on the insights that may be gained when engaging with the past. To begin to address these questions we distinguish two related uses of history as a resource for organizational identity: as a means of committing external audiences and, as a way of finding inward commitment. We theorize these two uses by drawing on speech act theory to develop a taxonomy of uses of history and to elaborate the opportunities and challenges that come when historical narratives are fashioned in the service of identity. We conclude with a further insight gained from speech act theory that suggests an engagement with history that requires sensitivity to prevailing conventions at the moment of these historical acts. We argue that appreciation of asynchronous historical conditions and contexts affords new insights through the difference these pose to current and instrumental concerns that otherwise guide the fashioning and interpretation of historical ‘facts.’

Emotion, succession, and the family firm: Josiah Wedgwood & Sons

We argue that both business history and social science studies of family firms often neglect the family qua family, in particular paying insufficient attention to the emotional elements of family as they affect family firms, separating out one from the other as distinctive variables, and treating each from a rationalising perspective. Adopting a microhistorical approach we use the case of succession at Josiah Wedgwood & Sons to argue that consideration of emotions and sensibilities provides new insight into behaviour at this world-famous firm.

History, a Useful "Science" for Management?: A Response

In response to Eric Godelier’s call for a partnership between business history and the management sciences I argue for a vision of business history as history. Whilst acknowledging the institutional and intellectual pressures to which the discipline is subject I argue such a turn is important for the continued health of the field. Such a turn will, however, also require engaging with fundamental questions of epsitemology.

Building the market: John Shaw of Wolverhampton and commercial travelling in early nineteenth-century England

Presenting a detailed reconstruction of the commercial travels undertaken by English hardware factor John Shaw in the period 1810–1815, this article reappraises the somewhat neglected role of the commercial traveller in British business history. In particular, it will be shown how, by the early nineteenth century, commercial travelling was well established and displayed elements of ‘modernity’. The case allows insights into the part played by factors and their commercial travellers in facilitating integration and specialization across the economy.

Industrial districts as organizational environments: Resources, networks and structures

Abstract The article combines economic and sociological perspectives on organizations in order to gain a better understanding of the forces shaping the structures of industrial districts (IDs) and the organizations of which they are constituted.To effect the combination, the resource-based view (RBV) and resource-dependency theory are combined to explain the evolution of different industry structures.The article thus extends work by Toms and Filatotchev by spatializing consideration of resource distribution and resource dependence. The article has important implications for conventional interpretations in the fields of business and organizational history and for the main areas of theory hitherto considered separately, particularly the Chandlerian model of corporate hierarchy as contrasted with the alternative of clusters of small firms coordinated by networks.

Barriers to Innovation in Marketing in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: Merchant-Manufacturer Relationships

This article uses new archival material from the North Staffordshire pottery industry to examine the process of transition from one institutional mode to another in marketing and distribution in the mid-nineteenth century. Drawing on detailed evidence of relationships between the manufacturing firm of Cork, Edge & Malkin and British and overseas merchants, it is demonstrated that the mercantile system did offer manufacturers low transaction costs in export markets. However, it is argued that high information costs were a more potent constraint on institutional innovation than was the disincentive of low transaction costs.