Roy Edwards

Job analysis on the LMS: mechanisation and modernisation c.1930-c.1939

This paper explores the development of job analysis by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) in the 1930s. It argues that historians have criticised the management decisions made by railway companies during the inter-war period without having examined the process by which these decisions were reached. Only by examining the process of managerial decision-making using internal company documentation can such claims be justified. The paper examines the market environment of inter-war freight haulage at LMS, followed by a review of the terminal handling process. This provides the context for an analysis of the contribution of Lewis C. Ord and job analysis to the modernisation and mechanisation of LMS terminal. The paper concludes that, while lacking financial sophistication, the LMS, by reflecting upon internal processes, delivered more efficient although not necessarily more economical working.

‘Keeping unbroken ways’: the role of the Railway Clearing House Secretariat in British freight transportation, c.1923–c.1947

With the amalgamation of Britains rail network in 1923, the role of the Railway Clearing House (RCH) in co-ordinating, operating and commercial decision making might have been expected to diminish. Instead the Clearing House secretariat extended its involvement in pricing and co-ordination between the ‘big four’ railway companies and even became the basis for the new nationalised industry in 1947. This paper explores the RCH as a venue for discussion and negotiation, where routines were articulated and codified, extending those within individual railway companies. In so doing, the RCH is revealed as an extension of the managerial hierarchy of each separate firm.

Enterprise logic vs product logic: the development of GE’s computer product line

Abstract The following article focuses on corporate strategies at General Electric (GE) and how corporate-level interventions impacted the market performance of the firm’s general purpose commercial mainframe product set in the period 1960–1968. We show that in periods of both divisional independent planning and corporate-level planning strategic governance, central decisions interfered in the execution of GE’s product strategy. GE’s institutional ‘enterprise logic’ negatively impacted the ‘product logic’ of its computer product line leading to a weakened position in the market for these systems.

Navigating the M-Form: Product Scope Review and the development of the General Electric Computer Department

This article seeks to explore the process whereby General Electric (GE) entered the computer industry during the mid-late 1950s. We explore the articulation of an internally contested business model through the study of the Product Scope Review (PSR) meeting which took place in October 1957. The article provides evidence of the difficulties surrounding the management of complex high technology industry in a large multi-divisional firm with competing calls on resources, and where a fundamental new technology disrupts established product lines. GEs attempt to manage the M-Form highlights the contradictions between decentralisation and a desire to retain vertical and horizontal economies.

Enterprise vs. product logic: the industrial reorganisation corporation and the rationalisation of the British electrical/electronics industry

Abstract This article examines how the corporate economy was shaped by government intervention through the facilitation of mergers by the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation (IRC) during the late 1960s. We focus on the IRC-led realignment of the electrical/electronics sector applying a conceptual framework to archival material relating to this sector. We find evidence that the mergers were informed by an enterprise-level view of the market while disregarding product-level decision-making and conclude that the IRC vision for the sector widely ignored the product-level logic associated with the designing, making and selling functions. Instead, they relied on assessments of enterprise-level management character.