Roy Church

The Family Firm in Industrial Capitalism: International Perspectives on Hypotheses and History

This comparative analysis of the international literature on family firms takes A.D. Chandlers concept of ‘personal capitalism’, presented in Scale and Scope, as the theoretical frame of reference. The article focuses principally on Britain, particularly the thesis that large family firms were probably major contributors to national economic decline during the first half of the twentieth century. However, comparisons drawn between the characteristics and role of family firms in the United States, Germany and Japan suggest that it is not possible to describe them in a way which transcends either chronological or geographical boundaries. Comparisons of the behaviour and performance of family firms and managerial enterprises suggest that, contrary to Chandlers view, as a concept the family firm offers a limited understanding of the differential industrial performance of competing national economies before World War II. National and corporate cultural differences are seen to have been more important influen...

Entrepreneurship, networks and modern business

Part 1 Entrepreneurial and business culture: the entrepreneur - the central issue in business history?, T.A.B. Corley entrepreneurship and business culture, Mark Casson business education and managerial performance - a study comparing Japan and America to France, Germany and England, Robert Lockie engineers as functional alternatives to entrepreneurs in Japanese industrialization, Kenichi Yasumuro. Part 2 Entrepreneurial success and failure in family firms: Quakerism, entrepreneurship and the family firm in North-East England, 1780-1860, Maurice Kirby beyond Buddenbrooks - the family firm and the management of succession in 19th-century Britain, Mary B. Rose entrepreneurship and the growth of the firm - the case of the British food and drink industries in the 1980s, V.N. Balasubramanyam. Part 3 Entrepreneurship and alternatives to the firm: cartels and internalization in the 18th-century copper industry, Robert Read entrepreneurship and product innovation in British general insurance, 1840-1914, Oliver Westall. Part 4 Uncertainty and innovation: success and adversity - entrepreneurship in agricultural engineering, 1800-1939, Jonathan Brown full steam ahead? the British arms industry and the market for warships, 1850-1914, John Singleton.

Ossified or Dynamic? Structure, Markets and the Competitive Process in the British Business System of the Nineteenth Century

This article challenges an interpretation of early and mid-Victorian business history which has emphasised the damaging effects observable during the late nineteenth century of a prior ossification of the industrial structure and of an associated lack of entrepreneurial vigour or aspiration towards growth. By focusing upon process rather than structure, the article underlines the intensity of competition in markets and innovative developments in marketing products regardless of the size, ownership and control of business enterprises.

Salesmen and the transformation of selling in Britain and the US in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries1

Was a transformation of selling in the US between the 1880s and 1930 exceptional? Archives of three leading British consumer goods companies reveal that a comparable transformation in selling methods was effected through the changing role for salesmen. Unlike the explanation offered for the transformation in the US, developments in Britain cannot be explained by a structural model in which the dynamics are mass production, size, corporate structure, and strategy. Consumer theory based on product characteristics and consumer behaviour provides a superior explanation. The history of marketing by the British companies also justifies a challenge to the production-driven interpretation of business development and corporate growth.

The dynamics of Victorian business : problems and perspectives to the 1870s

Introduction 1. Problems and Perspectives, R.A. Church 2. The coal industry, A.J. Taylor 3. The iron industry, P.J. Riden 4. The engineering industry, A.E. Musson 5. The shipbuilding industry, A. Slaven 6. Railway enterprise, T.R. Gourvish 7. The building industry, E.W. Cooney 8. The cotton textile industry, C.H. Lee 9. The woollen textile industry, E.M. Sigsworth 10. The shoe and Leather industries, R.A. Church 11. The drink trades, R.B. Weir 12. Commercial Enterprise, P.L. Cottrell

Purposive Strategy or Serendipity? Development and Diversification in Three Consumer Product Companies, 1918-39: J. & J. Colman, Reckitt & Sons, and Lever Bros./Unilever

Combining the neo-classical model of imperfect competition approximating to the markets in which the three firms competed with the resource-oriented and agency concepts of Edith Penrose, this essay describes, analyses and compares the evolution of the product development policies of three leading British consumer goods companies between the world wars. Historical profiles of the size, structural, and organisational features, and of the managerial resources within each firm are compared, as is the process by which searches were instituted through committees charged with the task of product diversification and development. An assessment of the progress, outcomes, and relative success of such policies reveals the contingent nature of the process. The conclusion that serendipity as well as rational purposive strategy contributed to the patterns of product diversification offers a novel interpretation of one vital but neglected dimension of the business process.

Trust, Burroughs Wellcome & Co. and the foundation of a modern pharmaceutical industry in Britain, 1880–1914

The literature relating to networks and organizational culture has acknowledged trust to be a valuable intangible asset. This article reviews the theoretical literature and the limited empirical research on trust in relation to business organizations and activity. Within this framework, the early history of Burroughs Wellcome & Co. reveals the importance of trust in building a cohesive organization and in establishing a reputation with the medical profession and with the trade. The study shows the construction of trust to have been an essential dimension in the companys growth to become the leading pharmaceutical manufacturer in Britain by 1914.

Edwardian Labour Unrest and Coalfield Militancy, 1890–1914

For many years a consensus among historians of the Edwardian age drew a contrast between the essentially stable, liberal society of the late Victorian years, when discussion, compromise and orderly behaviour were the norm, and an Edwardian society in which tacit conventions governing the conduct of those involved in social and political movements began to be rejected – by Pankhurst feminists, Ulster Unionists, trade union militants and syndicalists. This period of crisis was so described in 1935 by Edward Dangerfield in the The strange death of liberal England , a brilliantly evocative title which, despite the lack of precision contained in the argument presented in his book, exercised an enduring influence on subsequent interpretations of British social and political history before 1914. G. D. H. Cole and Raymond Postgate reinforced this interpretation of a society in crisis, and not until Dr Henry Pellings Politics and society in late Victorian Britain appeared in 1968 was the notion firmly rejected. There he denied that the convergence of the Irish conflict over home rule, the violence of the militant suffragettes, and unprecedented labour unrest signified either connexions or a common fundamental cause. The re-printing of Dangerfields book in 1980 (and Pellings in 1979) has been followed by renewed interest in these competitive hypotheses, and has led historians to re-examine the Edwardian age.

Beecham's, 1848–2000. From pills to pharmaceuticals

in terms of real estate. Di Matteo’s important contribution (chapter 6), which uses Ontarian probate records, shows that improvements in women’s rights explain only part of their increased wealth (at death); other spatial and temporal factors have significant explanatory power. Using their new database of share registers of 47 companies in different sectors of the British economy – 33,848 individual shareholdings in all – Maltby et al. (chapter 8) find that share ownership was not extended much beyond an affluent elite at any time before World War Two, contrary to contemporary thought and much recent scholarship on the subject. Indeed, this chapter runs somewhat counter to Michie’s contribution (chapter 7); he appears to take the democratisation of share ownership as given, at least by the interwar period, and then tries to explain why government did not intervene to improve the rights of shareholders much until after the world wars. Acheson and Turner’s essay (chapter 9) uses their well-established dataset on bank stock ownership to look at alternative explanations for women’s growing interest in limited-liability shareholdings. They find that, whilst limiting liability led to more risk, the premium such shares carried more than compensated for this, hence their ability to attract the risk averse (women). The last two chapters are different in character to those in the rest of the book. Hannah (chapter 10) looks at contested takeover bids, primarily in the UK, US, and France, and overturns some traditional wisdom on their relative popularity as a market disciplining mechanism. And Cassis (chapter 11) summarises parts of his recent work on the history of financial centres to show how investors invested. All in all, I think this is an important work of social history, especially useful for readers unfamiliar with the contributions of the individual authors involved. It would not look out of place as prescribed reading for gender history courses. Reading this book is also a very easy way by which to get to grips with the methodological strengths and weaknesses of histories which use probate records as their central source.

English Industrial Cities of the Nineteenth Century: A Social Geography

List of figures List of tables Preface A note on prices and distances 1. Urban geography and social history 2. Sources of diversity among Victorian cities 3. Contemporary accounts of nineteenth-century cities 4. Public transport and the journey to work 5. The geography of housing 6. Class consciousness and social stratification 7. The spatial structure of nineteenth-century cities 8. Residential mobility, persistence and community 9. Community and interaction 10. The containing context Notes Bibliography Index.