Robin Mackie

Family Ownership and Business Survival: Kirkcaldy, 1870-1970

This article uses a study of industrial firms in the Scottish burgh of Kirkcaldy to demonstrate high and rising survival rates among family firms during the first half of the twentieth century. Survival rates, however, were not constant and trends are linked to the evolving relationship between family and firm. In particular, it is argued that the adoption of limited liability increased the chances of firm survival, but also altered the character of family-owned firms. Finally, the article considers the reasons for a rise in exits in the 1950s and 1960s.

Bearing ‘the burden and heat of the day’: The experience of business failure in Douglas & Grant Ltd.

This article looks at the role of business culture in a business failure. Using the extensive records of the Scottish engineering firm of Douglas & Grant Ltd., it explores how the choices made by the firms leaders were shaped by their values and assumptions. The article argues that the failure of the firm to manage expansion in the first decades of the twentieth century was rooted in these values, which both encouraged its leaders to take risks and constrained their ability to manage change.

‘BEST FOR THE FAMILY’: RESEARCHING FAMILIES AND BUSINESS

Abstract For most of us, the term ‘family firm’ summons images of an old-established and perhaps rather conservative business that has been passed down through the generations. This article starts by using a study of one firm to argue that the stereotype conceals significant questions about firms, families and the relations between them. It goes on to outline some recent historical work on family firms by looking, in turn, at research on the incidence and character of family business, on the strategies and performance of companies, and on the family dimension in enterprise. It stresses the importance of the small-scale and the local in this research and notes that historians are now using a range of sources familiar to local and community historians to develop this field.