ABSTRACTS
Mike Anson, Bank of England,
UK
'By Land, Sea and Air:
The Grand Union Canal Company, 1929-47'
E-mail: michael.anson@bankofengland.co.uk
Histories of transport
have largely viewed the carriage of freight on Britain’s canals as an
irrelevance once the railway network had been developed.
The story portrayed is one of slow and inevitable decline until the
system was transformed into a now valued leisure amenity at the end of the
twentieth century. Arguably, this
process has not been fully understood. Characteristically,
canals were under the control of railway companies who deliberately allowed
decay to set in. Furthermore,
geography militated against the development of inland waterway transport on a
similar scale to that seen in continental Europe.
Freight tonnage carried by canal not only declined in absolute terms, but
in comparison with other modes it was minuscule.
Yet, in some places the railways’ canal operations remained important.
In any case, not all canals were railway-owned, and nor was disinvestment
by any means universal. Behind the
aggregate figures, decline was not continuous, and was not dispersed equally
across the whole system. In certain
regions, along particular flows, for certain traffics, canal carrying remained
profitable and of some importance, and there was investment to enhance capacity.
The paper considers the story of the Grand Union Canal Company (GUCC) which was
established in 1929. In responding
to railway and road competition, the GUCC adopted three main strategies.
First, by the amalgamation of a number of separate canal companies it
created a trunk network of over 300 miles of waterways between London and the
Midlands. This included the
GUCC’s own docks on the river Thames at Brentford and Limehouse.
Second, the company embarked upon a £900,000 modernisation along the
route. Bigger locks and a deeper
channel would allow the passage of vessels carrying in excess of 60 tons, three
times the existing capacity limit. Unfortunately,
this scheme was only partly realised.
Finally, the GUCC diversified its operations through 10 subsidiary
companies. These encompassed canal
carrying, shipping, road transport, warehousing, and stevedoring. There was much
opposition to these activities from the GUCC’s competitors in other transport
modes. After protests from the
railway companies about imported iron and steel being carried from London to
Birmingham by canal, the GUCC withdrew from the Railway-Canal Conference.
Shipping companies also threatened legal action against the GUCC.
However, in 1943, the company successfully obtained an Act of Parliament
which allowed it to take a limited interest in land, sea, and even air
transport. There was little
opportunity to pursue these opportunities further, because the GUCC and its
subsidiaries were nationalised and placed under the control of the British
Transport Commission in 1948.
The case reveals that by the time of nationalisation, the GUCC had made
significant progress towards creating a viable and integrated transport holding
company. It was based on targeting specific markets, traffics and
routes. Moreover this was built
around a supposedly outdated transport mode with little future.
Although only small in terms of total freight moved and modal share, for
the linear and niche markets that it served, the GUCC’s operations were
significant: a point that is still relevant in current debates about freight on
inland waterways.
Tokunbo A. Ayoola, Tulane University,
US
'Colonial Inheritance,
Post Colonial Neglect, and Management of Nigerian Railway by RITES of India'
E-mail: ayoola@tulane.edu
The construction, development,
and management of the Nigerian Railway (NR) network from 1898 to 1960 were
undertaken by both the British imperial and Nigerian colonial governments.
Developed essentially to transport of agricultural commodities and mineral
resources from the hinterland to the coast, its infrastructure was very
basic. As a result, after independence in 1960 when the new political leaders
sought to develop the economy of the country for the benefit of the generality
of Nigerians, they had to contend with an archaic railway infrastructure.
But rather than modernise this important colonial legacy, they concentrated
more attention and resources on road transport development. Coupled with
this was the mismanagement of the NR itself which adversely affected its
fortune. Such were NR’s crises in the late 1970s that the Nigerian government
had to invite the RITES of Indian to manage it.
The paper therefore seeks
to examine the interrelated factors of colonialism, post colonialism and
the management of rail transportation in Nigeria up until the late 1980s.
Cheryl Bailey, Black Country Archives Service,
UK
'Documenting the Workshop
of the World: Recognising the Importance of Business Records in the Black
Country'
E-mail: cheryl.bailey@dial.pipex.com
Business collections
form one of the most valuable, yet under-used sources of primary material held
by local authority archive services. Family
history researchers tend not to utilise this type of material, while those
actively seeking to use business records often find their research hindered by
the lack of listed material. Through
partnership working, the Black Country archive services (Dudley, Sandwell,
Walsall and Wolverhampton) have embarked on an innovative project to improve
access to, and encourage the use of, their archive collections, and in
particular their holdings of company records.
One of the strengths of the Black Country archives is their holdings of
business collections. It was said
in the 1860s that ‘the Black Country…cannot be matched, for vast and varied
production, by any other space of equal radius on the surface of the globe’.
The history of the Black Country is reflected in the rise of its
industries from the late eighteenth century, and the subsequent
industrialisation and urbanisation that took place in the nineteenth century.
British manufactured goods dominated world trade during the nineteenth
century earning Britain the title ‘Workshop of the World’.
The Black Country was a key player in Britain’s industrial development
and products manufactured locally were shipped across the empire and round the
globe. The collections housed
locally, which reflect this diversity of industrial enterprise, describe how the
region developed during the nineteenth century, and why the area of South
Staffordshire and North Worcestershire situated to the west of Birmingham came
to be known as the Black Country. The
‘Documenting the Workshop of the World’ project is a three-year initiative
designed to promote access to business and industrial records through
cataloguing, digitisation and outreach. The
aims of the project can be summarised within the context of the Black
Country’s wider objectives for archive development and promotion.
A range of business records are being catalogued to provide detailed
guides to hitherto unsorted collections. These
catalogues are being made available online to allow researchers to investigate
and understand the region’s industrial heritage.
The project is also undertaking the digitisation of historical images.
The cataloguing and digitisation form the basis of the joint Black
Country website which brings together the catalogues of the four archive
services. This allows users to perform seamless searches across several
databases from one point of entry. To
consolidate this work, the project will unlock the educational value of the
archives through the development of an outreach programme aimed at encouraging
local and national participation in the project and more broadly the region’s
heritage.
Sarah
Baker, University
of East London, UK
'The ‘prosumer’: Retro Style and Informal
Retailing Networks'
E-mail: u0415641@uel.ac.uk
The
term ‘prosumer’ has been in existence for more than twenty-five years. Alvin
Toffler (1980) coined the term to describe the blurred roles of the producer and
the consumer. He argued that businesses needed to employ the strategies of mass
customisation to make their goods stand out in the market place, and that
computers would lead to greater consumer choice. In more recent times new
consumer groups and activists have adopted this term to mean a non-corporate or
DIY approach to consumption. This DIY approach has also been theorised as ‘craft
consumption’ and used to refer to consumers who personalise and customise the
objects that they buy (Campbell, 2005).
This paper addresses the concept and definition of the
‘prosumer’ in relation to the development of the consumption and production
of retro style since the 1960s. It will document the history of retro retailing,
which has often been linked to informal retailing networks such as jumble sales
and car-boot sales, in which individuals or small groups are able to become
producers (Gregson and Crewe, 2003; McRobbie, 1989). It will bring the
discussion up to date with a detailed analysis of the impact of ebay on the
knowledge and practices of the consumption and production of retro style.
It will explore how the practices of buying and selling on ebay may increase
consumers’ expertise in marketing their own objects, tastes and
identities.
The paper will argue that although the concept of the
‘prosumer’ is useful, as it sums up the role of those involved in retro
style as both producers and consumers, previous theorisations of the term,
referred to above, are problematic. These theorisations present the development
of the ‘prosumer’ unilaterally, either dominated by the power of the
producer and new technologies, or as driven by consumer agency. This paper will
offer a more nuanced account of the ‘prosumer’ in the context of retro
style.
Bernardo Bátiz-Lazo,
University of Leicester and Mark Billings, Nottingham University, UK
'Strategic Change, Branching,
the Computer and Management Accounting in post-war British Building Societies'
E-mail: bbl3@le.ac.uk
Building
societies have played a significant role as providers of retail financial
services in Britain. After World
War Two they enjoyed significant expansion and the industry became much more
concentrated as the larger societies grew both organically and by merger. In the
immediate post-war decades many building societies replaced agency agreements
with more extensive branch networks as their main contact with retail depositors
and mortgage recipients. These
developments took place against a background of capital constraints and changes
in regulation, the nature of the housing market, technology, and managerial
practice. In this paper we examine the changes in management practice that took
place as the importance of the retail branch grew and branch networks expanded,
with a focus on the 1950s to mid-1970s. Of
particular interest are the roles of the computer and enhanced management
accounting in facilitating the shift from the previously fragmented industry
structure, an organizational change which took place much later than similar
changes in the commercial banks, which also had a significant presence in the
market for retail financial services, and industrial firms.
While
the changes discussed above and their impact on the financial services market
have been recognised in the literature, the significance of computerization and
its impact on management accounting in the sector have not.
The paper draws on contemporary professional books, manuals and journals
and new archival evidence from selected building societies and their trade
association.
Mark Billings, Nottingham
University, UK
'Corporate Treasury in
International Business History'
E-mail: Mark.Billings@nottingham.ac.uk
This
paper explores a hitherto largely neglected area of business history: the
corporate treasury. The corporate
treasury function is often considered a specialized aspect of the finance
function and has received little or no explicit attention in most business or
corporate histories. The paper
argues that this neglect is undeserved and that corporate treasury has played an
important role in international business history. Certain aspects of the
corporate treasurer’s role such as the management of cash and surplus funds
(i.e. the management of working capital) have always existed in business.
But the treasury function is wider than this: treasurers have had, and
continue to have, a major impact on their companies in areas such as making and
implementing financial policy and financial risk management.
The significance of the corporate treasury function and the treasurer is
evidenced by the fact that corporate treasurers now have their own professional
bodies in practically all developed countries and many emerging economies,
although these bodies vary greatly in their size, scope and functions. Corporate
treasury in multinational enterprises has helped business to transcend national
boundaries and acted as a means of diffusing business practices and financial
and accounting techniques across borders. In
addition, the development of the treasury function can be considered an aspect
of the ‘managerial revolution’ and treasurers as individuals can be seen as
part of the ‘managerial elite’. The paper considers how and why treasury has
evolved as a discipline distinct from other aspects of the financial function in
companies and seeks to place its development in the context of the changing
business environment. Broadly the
paper argues that the rise of the professional corporate treasurer can be
attributed to a number of factors: the wider professionalization of management;
change and innovation in financial markets; the contribution of finance theory
to the development of the practice of treasury; and the internationalization of
business. These factors impacted at different times in different
countries. In Europe, floating
currencies and volatile interest rates in the 1970s seem to have been a major
stimulus to the development of treasury, while treasury, in common with other
aspects of the ‘managerial revolution’, had developed earlier in the USA. The
paper draws on a range of primary and secondary sources including business and
corporate histories, corporate archives and the archives of the UK professional
treasury body, The Association of Corporate Treasurers.
Errietta Bissa, University
College London, UK
'Polis and Sitos: Regulating
the Grain Trade in Classical Greece'
E-mail: erriettabissa@hotmail.com
Grain was the main staple food
of the ancient Greeks. Many city-states, mainly in mainland Greece,
the Aegean and Asia Minor, needed to import sufficient grain to support
part of their population. Conversely, many city-states and kingdoms
on the fringes of the Greek World numbered grain among their most important
exports. The paper explores the role
of the state in regulating the trade in grain in the classical period (480-323
BC). Modern scholarship for the last half-century has supported the
view that the Greek city-state did not intervene in trade or regulate the
trade in commodities. Literary and epigraphical evidence, however,
reveal a different picture, where the state intervenes forcefully through
legislation and incentives in the grain trade. Starting from Athens with
its extensive legislation insuring the import of grain, I investigate parallel
policies in Klazomenai, Teos and Mytilene as well the export policies of
the Bosporan Kingdom in the Crimea. Athenian legislation on the import
of grain limited local traders and enforced specific parameters on commercial
investments. Teos pursued a similar system of intervention, although
less developed due to its smaller size and lesser power on the naval routes
in the Aegean. Klazomenai and Mytilene, on the other hand, targeted
the exporters in efforts to gain concessions and a steady supply.
The Bosporan Kings, on the part of the exporters, provided incentives and
lowered export taxes to specific importers in an effort to increase the
marketability of Pontic grain against its Egyptian competitor.
Investigating the different
policies employed by the Greek city-states and kingdoms to regulate the
trade in grain provides a unique insight into the ancient Greek world of
commerce and the role of the state in it. John Black, University
of the West of England, UK
‘Jobs for the Girls!’ The
rise of automation and clerical labour in the British Financial Services
Industry 1900-1950
E-mail: jb007e7433@blueyonder.co.uk
This paper explores the historical
development of the rise of women workers in the British financial services
industry from 1900 to 1950. Until 1914 the majority of clerical work
absorbing women was the state (Wardley, 2006). In particular the
majority of women workers employed by the state was within the General
Post Office, (GPO) from the late 1860s and the subsidiary Post Office Savings
Bank, (POSB) from 1870 onwards (Zimmeck, 1986; Wardley, 20006, Black, 2006).
By 1900 a number of independent girls schools had introduced secretarial
courses into their curriculum in order to prepare leavers with the skills
to work in the commercial world, notably the growing financial services
industries. Before 1914 very few women
found employment or careers in the British financial services industry
other than the POSB. However at the beginning of the 20th century,
a number of independent girls school had introduced secretarial courses
into their curriculum, in order to prepare leavers not destined for universities,
with the skills to work in the commercial world including the growing financial
services. Equally a number of secretarial colleges were opened in
major cities in Britain prior to 1914. This suggests that there was
a growing need for clerical labour in the major commercial centres of Britain.
Most of this demand was met through the employment of women. By the beginning of the 20th
century the British banking system was mainly locally based and moderately
sized. However the British banking system was dramatically transformed.
Wardley, (2006), suggests there were three major strategic reasons for
this, including their evolution into regional then national and even international
in scope. This resulted in the development of uniform procedures
including accounting and bookkeeping as a routine or mechanical process
of work. This generated an expansion of employment opportunities
for women. These processes included the introduction of automated
systems. The development of these processes
affected other allied financial services from the beginning of the 20th
century. Indeed the GPO and POSB began to employ automated and other
technological systems from the 19th century onwards (Campbell-Kelly, 1998).
This had implications for future developments for the British financial
services industry and the employment of women during the 20th century.
The purpose of this paper
is to explore the development of automation and technology within the British
financial services industry. This paper attempts to open the debate
that the growth of opportunities for women’s work within the financial
services industry related to the ‘mechanical’ or routine aspect of clerical
work rather than opening up any career opportunities. In terms of
previous research, this paper extends the original research undertaken
by Zimmeck (1986), into the mid 20th century.
Robert Brown, National Archives,
UK
'Developing a National
Strategy for Business Archives in England and Wales'
E-mail: Robert.Brown@nationalarchives.gov.uk
The
UK has generated some of the richest collections of business archives in the
world. Many of the historic archives created by older businesses
are now in local, national or university repositories; or are indeed still
preserved, used, and made available by the firms that created them.
Economic
and business historians, however, are more aware than most users both of the
significance of these archival resources – and also of their limitations.
For too many business archives languish uncatalogued and unavailable in
record offices: greater efforts are needed to make this material accessible, and
innovative new projects involving digitisation and the creation of union
catalogues (such as the Black-country-centred Documenting the Workshop of the
World) are beginning to improve the situation. The biggest problem of all
is the lack of any reliable procedure in the UK for the preservation of business
archives. We lack the kind of central and nationally funded business archives
that exists in other European countries. So
when firms go into liquidation the archives and records are very much at risk of
destruction. Furthermore, recent
developments in the British economy have significantly increased the threats to
the archives of business. Ever-increasing pressure on firms to reduce costs is
causing pressure to downsize or outsource records and archives. The increased
pace of mergers and acquisitions in the British economy may also be placing the
security of business archives under greater threat: new owners may not give the
same value to the history and records of the firms which they have acquired. In
this context the creation of a national strategy for the use and stewardship of
business archives is timely. The
main elements of this are outlined by Robert Brown, the Business Records
Development officer for England and Wales.
Mark Casson, University
of Reading, UK
'The Regulation of the
Victorian Railway System'
E-mail: m.c.casson@reading.ac.uk
The Victorian railway was a
major experiment in using private enterprise to construct and operate a
national transport network. Government sought to foster competition whilst
securing private profit for socially beneficial schemes. Railway companies’
need for joint stock status and powers of compulsory purchase gave government
considerable leverage over railway investment decisions. Government powers
increased further as passenger safety and workmen’s fares emerged as important
issues. In implementing transport
policy, analogies between investment in railways and investments in turnpikes
and canals proved to be misleading. Vertical integration of track and trains
quickly emerged as the preferred method of railway organisation. Critics
of government policy argued that this undermined the case for competition
between private companies. It was suggested that railway companies would
collude and that this would result in high fares and poor service to industry.
Recent research suggests that
while railways colluded over price, they competed to build new lines. Competitive
building of new lines resulted in excess capacity on the system. Excess
capacity, in turn, may have allowed inefficient operating practices to
persist. Diminishing returns to capital suggest that excess capacity would
eventually be checked by declining rates of profit which would discourage
further investment. But while such checks occurred, they seem to have been
weak. In principle, standard theories
of regulation should explain this pattern of behaviour, but in practice
they do not. Most theories of regulation are prescriptive; they deduce
what an efficient regulator would do, but do not explain how companies
will respond to inefficient regulation. This paper sets out a new
theory of regulation in network industries which is specifically designed
with historical applications in mind. It examines in detail the implications
of private competition in a network industry. The basic idea is that each
private operator will attempt to build their own self-contained network.
As rival networks expand, the network with the highest density of terminals
will obtain the greatest market share. But connectivity as well as density
is important in a network industry. As density increases, so the number
of pairwise connections increases quadratically, so that there are increasing
returns to density. These increasing returns stimulate over-capacity. Network
size stabilises where the returns from higher density are just offset by
the financial burden of excess capacity. If increasing returns are modest
this may occur before profits have fallen to a break-even level, but if
returns are high then profits will directly check growth. The paper shows that historical
evidence supports both the assumption of this model, that private companies
strove to build national networks, and the implication of the model, that
excess capacity emerged as a result of increasing returns to private network
size. It is argued that government policy was in error in condoning the
development of rival private networks. Potential gains from competition
were dissipated through wasteful excess capacity. Government should have
imposed lower freight rates and passenger fares in order to eliminate the
profits out of which the excess capacity was financed. Greater financial
stringency would have encouraged companies to maximise the potential of
their local and regional networks, and to co-operate more fully in the
operation of the national network.
Gareth Cole, University
of Exeter, UK
'The Private Sector and
the Office of Ordnance in the Great Wars with France, 1793-1815'
E-mail: G.J.Cole@exeter.ac.uk
Responsible
for providing the arms for both naval and military forces the Office of Ordnance
was heavily reliant on the private sector. Without private businesses,
contractors and individuals the British war effort would have stalled before it
had got going. The army that defeated Napoleon at Waterloo needed to have its
arms, artillery and stores supplied for it; the same was true for the fleet at
Trafalgar. This paper will focus on naval arms, particularly ordnance and
gunpowder. It is a little stated fact that no iron ordnance was produced by
Government manufactories and even by 1815 the private sector supplied nearly 50%
of the necessary gunpowder. The reliance on the merchant sector is obvious. If
we take the example of gunpowder, this reliance was further increased. Of its
three constituent parts, charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre only the former was
readily available in the British Isles. Of the other two, the majority of
sulphur came from Sicily and Southern Italy, whereas Saltpetre supply was
reliant on imports from India through the East India Company. When the
Mediterranean trade was disrupted following the withdrawal of the British fleet
in late 1796, sulphur imports to Britain dropped dramatically, only to rise
again after the Battle of Aboukir Bay and the reintroduction of the British
fleet. During this crisis, other sources were sought but were found to be
unsatisfactory. The paper will also discuss the contracting process between the
Ordnance and its suppliers to show differences between different materials: some
for a given amount of time and others for a given quantity. In this respect
ordnance and gunpowder can be seen to be unique, being the only stores
contracted in the latter manner. Even with these problems, this paper will argue
that standards were not only maintained but were actually improved in both
ordnance and gunpowder. Additionally, Ordnance-merchant relations do not appear
to have broken down and remained as cordial as could be expected under wartime
conditions.
Heliana Comin Vargas, São
Paulo University, Brazil
'The Evolution of the Retailing
and Services Urban Policies: The Case of São Paulo City'
E-mail: hcvargas@usp.br
Having as an example the city
of São Paulo, it is possible to observe changes in urban policies
concerning retailing and services activities as a result of changes in
the social and economic context. Although the control of the
development of retailing and services activities never reached, here (
in Brazil), the condition of being an urban policy itself, it is possible
to find some concerns about them through a search in urban law and codes. São Paulo city, since
1554, has passed through different emphases over time, as a result of changes
in the city's economic dynamics, as it went from being provincial capital
to coffee trade metropolis, subsequently becoming the country largest industrial
center, and today, it takes on the role of a city of services too with
10 millions people in the city and 18 millions in the great metropolitan
area. Retailing, whose target is the end consumer, has closely followed
the changes in the make up of the population and the urban land, both from
the qualitative and quantitative point of view. For better understanding the
evolution of urban policies concerning retailing and services activities
and their results, in São Paulo city, it divide the city history
in five periods with different approaches. The first one started considering
the control over individual behavior (1822-1889) and the relationship between
people, centered in measures which aimed fundamentally at ensuring the
physical well-being of the town's inhabitants through control over standards
of hygiene, morals and health safety. The second one period faces
the control over foodstuffs distribution (1989-1929) throughout free
fairs and public markets buildings, considering that São Paulo city
reaching 240,000 inhabitants at the turn of the XIX century, and becoming
the country's second largest city and assumes the condition of Coffee Metropolis.
The third period is regarded
to the control over retailing and services urban location (1929-1970) in
order to diminish conflicts among the urban uses and problems of traffic
congestion considering that, in 1950, the city’s population crept over
the 2 million mark. Supermarkets and department stores and Shopping Arcades
are the main representative buildings at that time. The fourth period is concerned
about the decentralization process of retailing and services activities
(1970-1990), assumed and reinforced by the first zoning law (1972). This
was the moment where the real estate capital had started building big retailing
and services plants, like shopping malls and mixed use developments. The fifth moment includes
the control over the impact of large retail spaces in the urban context
and the proliferation of street peddlers/vendors (1990-2007). The main concern at this moment
is the retailing and services urban management due to the size of the city
and its condition of becoming the main cultural and business tourism city
in the country. The urban policies have being including: the revitalization
of traditional business city centers; urban works in commercial
streets; and programs to manage shopping areas reinforcing the condition
of the city as the capital of shopping (retail and wholesale) with
different kind of goods, experiences and retail spaces to be in touch. This process asked for new
tools to control retailing and services development, in order to maintain
the quality of the public space and the vitality of traditional urban areas
and take advantages from the opportunities generates for this unique condition
of the city as well. We really believe that these tools go beyond urban
law, and they reach the field of labor law and taxation, the discussion
of property social rights and the need of achieving a fair and balanced
wealth distribution.
Duncan Philip Connors,
University of Glasgow, UK
'The Failure of Government
intervention in British shipbuilding 1964-1973'
E-mail: d.connors.1@research.gla.ac.uk
My paper will discuss the role
of government policy in determining the fate of British industry during
the so-called ‘long boom’ or ‘Golden Age’ of sustained economic growth
between 1950 and 1973. The academic debates concerning the change in the
global status of the United Kingdom after 1945 have evolved many separate
points of view over the past 20 years, particular with the development
of the ‘declinist’ paradigm. Indeed, The literature on British industrial
decline in the face of competition from Japan and West Germany has focussed
on whether the decline was relative (Abramovitz 1986) or whether it was
absolute (Olson 1982 and 1986) and in recent years the literature has developed
two conflicting arguments, namely the Broadberry-Crafts ‘manufacturing
failure’ hypothesis versus the Booth assertion that no economic decline
was evident in this period (Broadberry and Crafts 2003 and Booth 2003).
Although based on the in-depth analysis of contemporary data covering a
wide range of industries, it is my contention that a closer study of the
relationship between government and specific industries can significantly
add to the theories outlined above. As a specific industry, British shipbuilding
in this period underwent a rapid transformation from an important player
in the global market to a small specialist industry, whilst enjoying a
privileged association with central government. It is the study of this
relationship that has formed the basis for this paper. The literature on the decline
of British shipbuilding has focussed on technological, institutional and
political reasons for its demise. The first, advocates that British shipyards
failed to modernise and increase productivity compared to those in Japan,
West Germany and Sweden (Strath 1987). The second is that British institutional
arrangements and relationships were fractious when compared to those found
in competitor nations (Lorenz 1991). The political economy analysis states
that governmental failures exacerbated the problems of the shipbuilding
industry and did not address the industry’s concerns (Johnman and Murphy
2002). Taking the political economy approach, my paper will illuminate
the relationship between the Wilson Labour government of 1964 to 1970 and
shipyards in areas where there was either political devolution, Northern
Ireland, or administrative devolution, Scotland, focussing specifically
on Harland and Wolff in Belfast and Scott Lithgow in Greenock. By discussing the relationship
between the Wilson government’s instrument of modernisation, the Shipbuilding
Industry Board (SIB) and the Harland and Wolff and Scott Lithgow shipyards,
a contextual narrative of developments from 1964 up until the OPEC oil
crisis of 1973 will be presented. This paper demonstrates that government
attempts to modernise infrastructure failed because a 5-year process of
negotiation between shipyards and the SIB held up reconstruction, creating
a number of development plans that did not reflect the prevailing orthodoxy
and best practice found in shipbuilding globally, but rather a compromise
between government, the SIB and shipbuilders. Indeed, not only did these
negotiations involve the SIB and shipbuilders, but also central and regional
government and consequently, the outcome reflected a myriad of views and
opinions. As a contribution to the body of work on the economic decline
of post-war Britain, my paper places emphasis on the relationship between
government (both central and regional) and industry, producing a synthesis
between the declinist literature and works on the political economy of
this period.
Richard
Coopey, London
School of Economics, UK
'The Business of Art and
the Art of Business: The Production of Creativity in the Modern Economy'
E-mail: rcc@aber.ac.uk
One of the big debates in the
production and consumption of the arts is the place of subsidy and state
support. Should the "creative" sector be subject to the normal laws of
economy, or are they a separate entity, above the world of commerce, market
forces - products for the enlightenment of the consumer, or for the enlightened
consumer. Does this sector really constitute an "industry"? Clearly, at
one level it does. Despite the debate over subsidy the so-called creative
industries are an (increasingly) important sector of most advanced economies.
The arts involve business activity at a range of levels, from individual
producers and retailers to multinational, multidivisional corporations.
This paper will explore the relationship between the arts and business,
and business history, in the 20th century. It will cast a wide net, to
encompass, art, literature, film and TV, popular music and fashion. In
doing so the paper will highlight the range of business activity involved,
including the relationship between innovation and the market, the structure
and nature of arts enterprises, the role of technology in production and
consumption, the development of mass markets and the role of national and
international networks. All sectors of the arts industry, for example,
struggle with the inherent contradictions of the new and the classic, the
ephemeral and the traditional, the simultaneous approbation and admiration
of the "commercial" – how do individuals or corporate entities relate business
considerations to this volatile economic environment? One of the principal
aims of the paper will be to understand whether it is useful to discuss
the sector as a homogenous entity, or whether the range of activities differ
markedly in terms of historical trajectories, the nature of production,
the relationship between "artist" and the economy and so on. The paper
forms an extension of work being undertaken by the author on the history
of the popular music industry, between 1950 and 1975, currently underway
at the Business History unit, LSE.
Tony Corley,
University
of Reading, UK
'Overcoming Country-Specific
Disadvantages in the Pharmaceutical Industry: Beecham to GlaxoSmithKline
1960-2000'
E-mail: t.a.b.corley@reading.ac.uk
This
paper aims to operationalise John Dunning’s key concept in multinational
theory, of country-specific advantage in overseas enterprise. It presents an
empirical study of pharmaceuticals in the later 20th century period
of ever accelerating globalisation. Beecham, based in the less advantaged
British economy, has since the 1960s been able to compete successfully against
American competitors, by acquiring from US sources the advantages it needed.
A manufacturer of OTC medicines, Beecham entered the pharmaceutical
industry in 1959 by evolving the world’s first semi-synthetic penicillins.
Incapable of moving from pilot plant to full-scale production, it secured
know-how from the US Bristol-Myers, which helped also with erecting its initial
antibiotic factory. Beecham then established both manufacturing and R&D
units in the United States, thereby gaining rapid information on the spot about
new techniques, of use there and in the UK. It also adopted American methods of
marketing, which it made the chief executive’s direct responsibility.
From 1987 onwards, Beecham acquired American entrepreneurship, recruiting
a US chairman who introduced Harvard Business School techniques, and also two
senior executives from US drug corporations. They then arranged a merger of
equals with SmithKline of Philadelphia; the resulting SmithKline Beecham (SB)
had its head office in Britain but its operational HQ in the United States. SB
also forged collaborative agreements with US biotech companies.
In the 1990s, a decade of increasing concentration in the industry, it
joined with Glaxo Wellcome to form GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the second largest
drug company in the world, British-owned but with its operational HQ still in
America. Almost half of GSK’s sales were to be in the United States, as were
half of its total R&D operations. Britain’s advantage in pharmaceuticals
was now to control this major global corporation while retaining full access to
the US technology it still needed to remain fully competitive.
Howard Cox, University of
Worcester, UK
'International Capital
Movements and the Treasury Embargo of 1931: The case of the Boots Share
Deal'
E-mail: h.cox@worc.ac.uk
The
repatriation of the share capital of Boots of Nottingham from American back to
British investors between 1932 and 1933 provides an early example of
international transactions circumventing restrictions put in place by national
governments. When the American owners of the Boots Pure Drug Co., the United
Drug Co., made their first attempt to float these share in the UK, the Treasury
enforced an embargo which prevented the transaction from going ahead. Within a
few months, however, the deal had been successfully revived and the shares were
placed with British investors, leaving the Treasury and the Bank of England
effectively helpless to intervene. Although business historians are well aware
of this episode, the details have not to date been properly explained or
understood. This paper sets out the specific circumstances of the first
attempted deal, its collapse, and the subsequent resuscitation process. It does
this using government records, held at the National Archives in London, that
reveal the details of the decisions of Treasury and Bank of England officials,
up to and including the Governor of the Bank of England, Montagu Norman, and the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Neville Chamberlain.
Andrea
Davies, University of Leicester and Richard Elliott, University of Bath, UK
'Serving Herself: Evolution of Brand Consciousness
and an Empowered Consumer in the UK'
E-mail: ajd42@leicester.ac.uk
Tracing the evolution of brand
consciousness and brand choice through the lived experience of women is our
focus. Consumption and brand symbolism are both characteristic of consumer
culture and deeply implicated in theories of symbolic consumption, branding and
brand theory. Our paper seeks to know when and indeed how brands moved from
functional markers of quality and performance to become the important symbolic,
emotional and social resources that are reported by consumers today. The paper
reports analysis drawn from an ESRC funded project (RES-000-22-0863) which
captures the life narratives of women from 1910 onwards in the United Kingdom.
From the continuing analysis of data drawn from twenty three-generational family
sets of women we show how the change to self-service retail formats was a
pivotal influence on the early development of brand consciousness. For the first
time women were responsible for making their own consumption choices.
Increased choice and responsibility was often experienced (at least initially)
as challenging or confusing. Our study identifies empowerment as a complex or
paradoxical process and provides further empirical evidence for a growing number
of studies that that have challenged the linear benefit assumptions given to
increased choice arising from classic economic theory. We show the development
of brand consciousness is associated with a movement from the community-located
consumer with little sense of choice in many aspects of life, to the individual
/family decision maker for whom consumption is a major arena for lifestyle
choices. For ordinary people mass consumer culture is found to be far from
mature in the 1960s as has been suggested by studies that have not included
consumers' recollected experience (Usherwood 2000; Bocock 1993). By
tracing and comparing the dynamics of brand consciousness and brand choice we
are also beginning to show how positive-creative-inclusive,
negative-confusing-excluding as well as ambivalent experiences unite and divide
generations.
Stephanie Decker, Liverpool
University, UK
'The Return of Free-standing
Companies - John Holt & co. in Nigeria'
E-mail: sdecker@liverpool.ac.uk
Mira
Wilkins’ concept of the free-standing company (FSC) has been particularly
influential in the study of British business in the Empire, and there have been
suggestions that this type of firm was suited well for operations in less
developed countries or colonies. The company studied here, John Holt & Co,
traded with Nigeria since the late nineteenth century, originally as a
free-standing company (although Mira Wilkins disputes that trading companies
were FSCs), then expanded in Africa and Europe for a few decades in the
twentieth century, and eventually became part of Tiny Rowland’s
Lonrho. After a management buy-out in 2001, Holt became a free-standing
manufacturer and merchant in Nigeria, headquartered in Liverpool. Why did the
company return to an organisational form that many would associate with the
historical time period of imperialism? In interviews with the chairman and
managing director in Liverpool and Lagos, a number of reasons emerged, which
suggest that more companies in Africa are likely to operate in a similar way.
Lonrho Africa, the rump trading operations of Tiny’s Lonrho, have equally
reverted to free-standing (also headquartered in Liverpool), and there are
probably more medium-sized companies following this pattern. This paper explores
in how far the current conditions favouring FSCs can help shed new light on the
historical FSC, and what it means for business (history) that free-standing
companies appear to become viable organisational forms again.
Colin
Divall, University
of York, UK
'Building Networks: The
London and North Eastern Railway's Response to Road Distribution, 1923-39'
E-mail: c/o michael.anson@bankofengland.co.uk
Despite
its central importance to the rapidly growing consumer society of the inter-war
period, few historians have examined the distribution of merchandise. The
seemingly inexorable rise of road haulage after 1920 has long been noted, and
more recently Peter Scott has estimated the effect both on the size of the
overall market for moving goods and the competitive position of the railways. A
tiny number of studies give some insights into the policies and practices of
individual road haulage firms to supplement Thomas Gibson’s overview of the
industry. Scott has recently mounted a spirited defence of the railways’
response to the road hauliers, arguing that the companies were hamstrung by an
inappropriate regulatory framework imposed by the 1921 Railways Act and that they therefore
acted rationally in seeking to obtain legislative redress via the regulation of
road haulage. Basing his case partly on the largest of the Big Four railway
companies, the LMS, he also argues that given this constraint the railways
generally based their pricing on sound business principles and, despite
conservatism in some spheres of operation, they were fairly innovative,
particularly from the late 1920s, when it came to service improvements. This
paper is a coda to Scott’s argument. It draws upon evidence in a rarely used
source, the company magazines, to explore in more detail the way in which the
London and North Eastern Railway – the second largest of the companies, and
the one most badly affected by economic depression – perceived and responded
to the threat of road distribution. The company magazine was primarily aimed at
the workforce, and so provides evidence both for the way in which management
wished its policies and practices to be understood, and for the workers’ own
take on such matters. More particularly, I examine three aspects of the LNER’s
response to road haulage. First, attempts by managers to enrol workers into the
competitive battle by conceptualizing the entire workforce as a gigantic sales
force. Second, the debate within the railway at all levels over the pros and
cons of its competitive position, particularly relating to the method of
charging and the national reach of the network. Third, the development, after
the grant of road powers in 1928, of attempts to meet the threat of road haulage
by providing a comprehensive rail-road system of distribution.
Helen Doe, University of
Exeter, UK
'Women in Business or Businesswomen?
The Challenges for Women in the Maritime Industry, 1780-1880'
E-mail: H.R.Doe@exeter.ac.uk
The historiography of businesswomen
is still developing and two books published in 2006 have shown that despite
apparent limitations of law and custom women ran a range of businesses
in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The problems
of investigating the ‘hidden investment’, women as the unknown and silent
partners in family business, have been recognised by Davidoff and Hall.
Women are usually only seen to be running a business as they become widows.
An added difficulty is that good source material such as business accounts
for female enterprises are rare and so trade directories or insurance records
are frequently the sole indication of a woman in charge of a business.
These sources, however, can only indicate the presence of the women and
provide little indication of the role the woman played in the enterprise.
In the shipping industry women
appear in a range of businesses such as shipbuilding, ship management,
sailmaking, chandlery and blacksmithing. Many of these are in traditionally
non feminine trades. By examining the nature of the role, the business
challenges for both men and women and considering the individual circumstances
of the women it is possible to build up a more complete picture of the
businesswoman. Where possible the business effectiveness was measured to
determine whether the enterprise improved or declined when being run by
a woman. The maritime sector provides a range of ways in which both the
effectiveness of a business and the business and personal challenges can
be revealed. This paper aims to set the businesswoman in her proper context
rather than as a fleeting entry in a directory.
C. Downs, Manchester
Metropolitan University
'Oznaby, Umbrellas and
Hats for the Ladies: Trading with the West Indies during the War of Independence'
E-mail:
c.m.downs@mmu.ac.uk
It is unusual for an historian
to be able to establish in great detail the life of any but those considered
one of ‘the great and the good’. The unusual amount of documentary sources;
both by, and about, Daniel Eccleston (1745-1821) provide a rare opportunity
to view a turbulent period in British history through the experiences of
an individual. Eccleston’s business letters reveal a hidden history that
lies beneath received wisdom of the period. The West Indies are revealed
by the Eccleston letters as something of a poisoned chalice for slave-owners
as well as for slaves: with the risk of death through disease an ever present
accompaniment to the prospect of riches. Eighteenth-century America, the
cradle of liberty and freedom, is illustrated, by a telling comment of
Eccleston’s, not as the land of opportunity for all, but a place of unremitting
toil and hardship for the many. This paper will look at the
methods of financing trade across the Atlantic in the 1780s and will consider
how consumer demand was met. The paper will consider how merchants overcame
the difficulties of privateers, hurricanes and death and will show that
communication and business practices that are recognisably modern were
well-established by the 1780s. The paper will also illustrate how communications
and networks that were mainly for business purposes were also a means of
spreading radicalism across the Atlantic and the regions of England and
the importance of links between traders in the development radical ideas
in the period.
Paul
Duguid, University
of California Berkeley, US
'A Prehistory of Trademark
Law: The French Connection'
E-mail: duguid@ischool.berkeley.edu
While
we have numerous good histories of patent and copyright law, comparatively
little has been written about the early history of trademark law.
Modern accounts tend to begin with the British Merchandise Marks Act of 1862,
the US act of 1870, or the British Trade Mark Registration Act of 1875.
Such accounts tend to ignore the pressures that brought these laws into being.
On the one hand there was the growing litigation in (and growing costs of)
Equity courts, as firms found it increasingly imperative to establish control
over the use of their names and marks. On the other there was significant
diplomatic pressure, as countries tried to standardize their approach to trade
marks in particular and intellectual property in general. For both Britain
and the US, the French were particularly influential in both these areas.
French firms fought in both English and US courts (indeed, it was a French-led
suit that led to the US law of 1870 being declared unconstitutional), while
French diplomacy (in particular, for England, the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty of
1860) also brought pressure to bear on parliament. I will examine this
usually overlooked "French connection", suggesting that it throws a
new light on conventional accounts of trademark law and strategy in the late
nineteenth century.
Clive Edwards, Loughborough
University, UK
'The ‘Scandinavian ideal’
in retailing of design: Two distinct approaches to the marketing of an
ideal'
E-mail: C.Edwards@lboro.ac.uk
The ‘Scandinavian ideal’ in
design has, arguably, been established for over a century and has manifested
itself in a variety of ways. This paper investigates two apparently very
different attempts to market this ideal across the world. The case studies
are of the wholesale export Danish furniture industry in the period 1950-70
and of the ‘Swedish’ furniture retailers IKEA from the 1970s to date. It can be argued that ‘Scandinavian
design’ is a retail brand that is the basis of an identity myth that allows
individuals to personify the brand to fit their own biography and thus
create a relationship. This brand image has taken many years to develop
and is an interesting mix of benign socialism, user-centred design, and
elegant simplicity, all delivered by an efficient business infrastructure
with a global reach. The interesting comparison
of a group of manufacturers and a single retail company may seem at first
to be incongruous. However, this paper argues that they both have had a
distinctive approach to the brand issue, have come to it completely differently,
but the underlying tenets are remarkably similar to each other and the
original ideas that founded the values of Scandinavian design. The issues associated with
brand image and cultural branding, linked to retailing strategies across
nations, are two main planks of investigation. In the case of the Danish
furniture industry, the brand was based on tradition, quality and brand
exclusivity, sold through retailers who were design specialists. The culture of design, although
consumer-orientated and ergonomically considered was based on a craft and
industry approach which was heavily concerned with making quality products
for an exclusive market. On the other hand, the democratisation
that lay at the heart of the Scandinavian ideal may have been better served
by IKEA. This was achieved through the globalization of the market place
for home furnishings, by appealing to a mass market across a range of consumer
profiles, and developing an organizational strategy that could deliver
standardized products that were subtly adapted to local marketing conditions. The selling of the ‘Scandinavian
ideal’ to a world-wide market by the two case studies reveals a range of
similarities and differences that reflect similar and differing marketing
approaches. Both use the cultural brand idea of Scandinavia being
the home of ‘good design’, but IKEA stress democracy over elitism. As a study of two and business
organisation this paper reveals the impact of issues such as marketing,
consumer identity, economics of change and internationalisation of furniture
selling.
Roy Edwards, University
of Southampton, UK
'Technological Change and
the Transition from Rail to Road: An Opportunity Lost, c. 1920-30'
E-mail:
R.A.Edwards@soton.ac.uk
This
paper deals with the emergence of road hauled freight as a serious competitor to
the railways in the interwar period, and the associated regulatory policy
pursued by the Ministry of Transport. The
transport network had always been a ‘creature of statute’ and immediately
after the First World War, the newly formed Ministry of Transport was faced with
the task of restructuring the railway network to facilitate, ‘efficient and
economical working’. However, the
War had seen the demand for road hauled vehicles, powered by both steam and the
internal combustion engine, assume a new importance.
By 1928 the recently amalgamated ‘big four’ railway companies were
pushing to be given road haulage powers that would complement their existing
cartage and delivery services. These
were duly granted. However, this paper will argue that the failure to consider
granting such powers earlier, as part of the 1921 Railway Act, held up the
development of integrated road-rail distribution.
While civil servants at the Ministry realised that that road haulage
represented an important threat to the railway freight business, their political
masters lacked the will to grant road powers to the railways. This had consequences for the railway companies, as they were
being regulated as if a monopoly, when in fact road haulage produced a market
more akin to competition. It is
possible that had road powers been granted under the 1921 Act, then a more
comprehensive distribution network might have been created, and some of the
problems faced in the period by the railways been ameliorated.
Evidence from the thirties indicates that the railways were keen to
develop transport services along the lines of modern logistic organisations.
Stuart Evans, Central Saint
Martins, UK
'A Virtual Guild'
E-mail: s.evans@csm.arts.ac.uk
This paper will focus on an
Arts and Crafts group called The Century Guild of Artists (floreat 1882-1892).
It is regarded as one of the earliest and most significant of such groups
which characterised the Arts and Crafts movement. The Century Guild’s
stated aim was ‘To render all branches of Art the sphere, no longer of
the tradesman but, of the Artist’. This anti-trade stance was not
reflected in either its output or its methods. The Guild mainly produced
furnishings for the middle class home: many of its products incorporated
its initials or rebus in their design as an indicator of source; it used
established up-market house furnishers with premises in prominent positions
as agents to market its wares and, as store-within-store, it displayed
its name outside, and it presented itself to the public through displays
of fully furnished rooms shown at national and international exhibitions.
However it also presented itself as part of the contemporary arts world
through its associated journal; The Century Guild Hobby Horse, and, disinterestedly,
it recommended other art furnishers, some of them potentially in competition
with the group or its agents. Contemporary journalistic criticism
was split between praise of its anti-commercial position and those who
condemned it for that reason. It can be speculated that
although avowedly anti-commercial the Century Guild used advanced methods
in its organisation, marketing and selling. It appears that it had no staff
apart from those of the architectural practice from which it was promoted;
it claimed to have workshops, but these were the premises of the artists
associated with it; the furniture it sold was made to their designs by
their agents, and it is likely that they at least shared the expense involved,
perhaps its entire cost, for the public response the Guild’s work excited;
production of its wallpapers and textiles was contracted out, and again
the producers probably shared or assumed the costs; the items of artwork
and craft exhibited as by the Guild's members and sold by its agents were
probably taken on a sale or return basis and the Guild may well have charged
commission. It is likely the costs of its exhibition appearances was managed
through a revolving fund, the sale of the set of furnishings shown financing
the next appearance. It is possible to demonstrate a link between the design
of Century Guild artefacts and interiors with the manufacturing and trading
methods they employed, that is, the appearance was in part generated by
the means of production and marketing. The paper will be contextualised
by locating the Century Guild against other London-based furnishers who
introduced new manufacturing and trading methods.
Özen Eyüce, Bahcesehir
Üniversity, Turkey
'Ottoman Railways and the
Effects on Urban Structure of Izmir'
E-mail: ozen.eyuce@bahcesehir.edu.tr
Taking cue from transformations
occurring in the nineteenth-century Western world, the Mediterranean port
of Ýzmir (Symrna) in Western Anatolia, underwent development in
its economy, demography, urban morphology, and witnessed the introduction
of infrastructure related to communication and information systems. The city, which developed
an agricultural economy in the18th century due to its vast agricultural
hinterland, has become a distribution and control centre of a market economy
from the second half of the 19th century on. The new Free Trade Agreement
signed with England and proceeding regulations for the landownership of
foreigners led the same foreigners to move towards the inlands of Ýzmir,
to the vast hinterland so as to exploit mining and agricultural resources.
As a consequence of these developments, the city was subjected to demographical
changes both as quantitative and compositional changes. This heterogeneity
can clearly be seen in the settlement pattern and architectural end products.
Examples of these can still be seen today despite devastating fires and
earthquakes. The developments in the form of suburban expansions are the
most important reflection of the changes in the land policies and also,
of the developments in transportation systems. Modernisation of communication
and information systems parallel to the developments in the West has led
to the rapid spread and expansion of residential areas in Ýzmir.
Especially, after the building of Ýzmir (Alsancak) – Aydýn
and Ýzmir (Basmahane) - Kasaba railway lines, suburbs have rapidly
developed. These two railway lines, with
dead end in the form of a tree-like scheme, were built by British (1856)
and French (1863) companies to transport the raw material from its point
of extraction to the newly built port. The railway system, while transforming
caravan routes to short-distance inter city routes, has also caused the
traditional organic pattern of the inner city to change into a regular
planned pattern.
Albane
Forestier, London
School of Economics, UK
'Mercantile networks and
the circulation of information: the West Indian trade of Bristol in the
1780s seen through business correspondences'
E-mail: A.R.Forestier@lse.ac.uk
This paper is part of a doctoral
research, which aims to understand the commercial organisation of the West
Indian trade in France and Britain, the two largest European trading nations
in the eighteenth-century, and its influence on both countries’ success.
Business communities in ports have been the objects of individual monographs
in each country, but no attempt has yet been made to compare French and
English historiographies, therefore allowing for misconceptions to be cleared,
or to put these studies in a wider international perspective. The revision
of these historiographies is also justified by the increasing attention
paid to networks as a conceptual tool for explaining relationships between
firms and the adoption of particular sets of business practices. The interest
in networks derives from their primordial role in creating flows of information,
credit, goods or resources. This study will examine business correspondences
from traders in Bristol and Bordeaux, both national leaders in the sugar
trade. In both countries, the trade with the West Indian colonies was controlled
by individual firms, and mostly developed outside the influence of central
governments. However, it is often claimed that French traders were less
efficient than their English counterparts, despite macroeconomic evidence
to the contrary. A closer look at networks can provide additional insight
into this matter. In this paper, I will be looking
at the business correspondence of two Bristol traders in the 1780s: James
Rogers a leading slave trader, whose business failed in 1793 and John Pinney
arrived from Nevis in 1783. Other chapters of the dissertation will focus
on networks in the first half of the eighteenth-century and evaluate patterns
of changes in trading networks. The West Indian trade, because
of the distance involved and the delays in communication, was subject to
asymmetric information and cooperation problems between actors. Information
on price, availability and demand for goods and resources was vital for
traders, who invested a high proportion of their working capital in each
venture under very risky and competitive circumstances. I argue that networks
helped solve these coordination problems by allowing for long-term cooperation
between firms and individuals.
Metropolitan traders used
their relations with captains, associates in the West Indies, other affiliated
traders and planters to derive information about the colonial context and
transmit orders and decisions. This study aims to offer a clear typology
of these relations by focusing on communication links. Evidently, networks
established or used for the distribution of information overlap with other
types of networks, based on commercial and family relationships, and this
aspect will be more specifically investigated. The size, diversity and
configuration of the networks created by these merchants will be examined.
Size, based on the number of correspondents, is important as it determines
the degree of flexibility and choice between locations for doing business.
Diversity, understood as the multiplicity of differently specified contacts,
permits the circulation of different types of information and its control
through cross-examination. Configuration, which refers to the general structure
of networks, helps explain the performance of firms based on the efficiency
of the networks they belong to.
Robert
Greenhalgh, UEA, UK
'Trade
and Business Disruption, Guernsey and the Nazi Occupation'
E-mail: robert.greenhalgh@uea.ac.uk
The
research period allows the study of the disruption of established international
and domestic business networks in the Bailiwick during a vastly changing
historic period. The immediate pre-war economy was a period of a growing
prosperity for the islands based on an agriculture and tourism after a period of
depression. The period from June 30th 1940 until the 9th
of May 1945 saw the German Occupation and the immediate post-war period saw the
re-establishing of trade patterns, to some extent in an altered state. This
research examines the oral and documentary historical evidence that relates to
these issues, from a within a Guernsey perspective. Guernsey’s
war-time experience is often referred to as one of suffering deprivation and
this is indeed for many one of the main themes of its history in this period.
Nevertheless there was, for some of those remaining in the islands,
opportunities to take part in an expanding economy with substantial investment
by the Nazis in the airport and in defence constructions. Opportunities to
engage in a black market were also available and judgements regarding the extent
to which this operated are difficult to make. Logistics and the hotel industry
also had substantial volume increases in activity reported in the States
records, but the extent to which prosperity flowed from the Occupation is
disputed. For Jewish businesses the
situation was unambiguously atrocious. Firstly, forced to display ‘Jewish
undertaking’ signs in their windows after the States passed the anti-Jewish
legislation demanded by the Nazis the business owners suffered further when they
were forced to sell off or relinquish ownership of their businesses. However it
is not clear how this process was applied to Montague Burton’s. Their business
did cease but without stock from the mainland it was unlikely in any case to
prosper in the way that it had. The archive gives some clue but the nature of
the long-standing censorship and an omerta preclude the assembly of a full and
complete account of this significant issue. The immediate post-war period is a
fascinating one. The War Tax Profits levy and the restricted currency conversion
opportunities were designed to punish the ‘profiteers’ but there were
difficulties in implementing the collection of the levy by the States. The
phase ‘Model Occupation’ referring to the Channels Islands in general has
mostly been interpreted in the context of a model for the Nazi Occupation of the
United Kingdom. More recent historiography suggests that the phrase ‘Model
Occupation’, more controversially, could refer to the behaviour of the
islanders, as being model subjects during the Occupation. This study
draws on documentary and oral evidence to explore both models.
Richard Hang, University
of Reading, UK
'The Comparison of Retail
Evolution of Department Store and Supermarkets in China (1900-2005)'
E-mail: h.hang@rdg.ac.uk
Although the under
research of retail evolution has been well documented (e.g. Benson and Shaw,
1994; Jefferys, 1954), as scholars held the “false belief that distribution is
a sterile, unproductive activity”(preface, Jefferys, 1954) and bypassed the
retailing sectors and distribution systems to focus research on “seemingly
more promising fields to study in manufacturing, or social and demographic
change” (page 1, Benson and Shaw, 1994), it seemed that this trend don’t
diminish over time (Benson and Shaw, 1994). Furthermore, even among those
limited researches focusing on retail evolution, majority of them developed
theories or models with only reference to American or European retail experience
(e.g. Benson and Shaw, 1994; Coles, 1999a; 1999b; Brown, 1987; Alexander, 1997;
Godley and Fletch, 2000; Godley, 2002; Savitt, 1989) while ignoring others. In
additional, Brown (1987) argued that these so-called theories of retail
evolution to large extent are “as little more than inductively derived
generalisation” (page 5), therefore considerable concerns remained to the
limitation of their generalizabiltiy as they were all conceived as context
dependency (Evans, Barnes and Schlacter 1993). In order to fill in the above
research gaps, this paper by focusing on the emergence and evolution of
department store and supermarkets in China over the last century (1900-2005),
tries to test those theories’ generalizability and creates a theory best
suitable for retail evolution in the Chinese context.
Another aim of this paper is to explore how country’s institutional
framework could influence the retail technology transfer as both of these two
retail formats were brought to China from the West where the national
institution environment are different.
Catherine Harbor, Royal
Holloway University of London, UK
'The Birth of the Music
Business: Advertising Commercial Concerts in London 1660–1750'
E-mail: C.Harbor@rhul.ac.uk
London in the late seventeenth
and early eighteenth century was a large and powerful city: the home of
both the nation’s parliament and its sovereign, it was also an important
centre for finance, trade and manufacturing (Corfield 1982). Already
the largest city in Europe by 1700, London continued to grow throughout
the eighteenth century and by 1800 was the third largest city in the world,
being exceeded in population size only by Edo (Tokyo) and Peking (Beijing)
(Harding 1990; Lawless and Brown 1986; Rozman 1976; Finlay and Shearer
1986). This large and growing population provided a ready consumer
market for the multifarious industries to be found within its environs.
Not least among these was the rapidly increasing commercial entertainment
industry, providing amusement both for the locally-resident middle classes
and for the members of polite society who flocked to the social centre
that was London during the ‘season’. Among the various elements that
made up the entertainment industry, music was for the first time becoming
a commercial venture, moving away from its earlier dependence on church,
court and home. It was in this context that the public concert emerged.
Concert-like events had been in existence for some little time — as part
of the entertainment provided at a theatre, an open-air performance by
the town waits (musicians), or a private concert at court or in the house
of a nobleman. The novel feature of public concerts as they developed
in London in the late seventeenth century was that they were commercial
enterprises: entrepreneurs advertised their concerts in newspapers and
elsewhere, engaged professional musicians, charged admission and hoped
to make a profit. Many phenomena came together
to aid the birth and development of the music business. Plumb has
drawn attention to the increasing affluence in British society that aided
the commercialisation of leisure in the eighteenth century: ‘This can be
discerned in the 1690s, and by 1750 and 1760 leisure was becoming an industry
with great potentiality for growth’ (Plumb 1982). This, he avers,
was one of the ‘social signs of affluence’. Another, that of a boom
in the publishing industry, also aided and abetted the rise of commercialised
leisure. The lapsing of the Licensing (Printing) Act in 1695 ended
the control of the Stationers’ Company over the number of printers.
There was an immediate and rapid increase in the number of printers leading
to the foundation of new newspapers in London and elsewhere and a boom
in publishing generally. The single official newspaper that had been
allowed previously under the Act, the bi-weekly London Gazette, was joined
in 1695 by three new London newspapers: The Flying Post, Post Boy, and
Post Man. These were published three times a week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays
and Saturdays, to tie in with departures of the Penny Post from London.
The first successful daily paper, the Daily Courant, began publication
in London in March 1702 (Harris 1978; Black 1991, 2001). The great
growth in the printing industry, shown in the huge increase in the number
of newspapers, provided an opportunity for public commercial concerts to
be advertised, and the ever-expanding number of publications both of music
and of musical instruction manuals reflected and fed the mounting interest
in music.
This paper will examine the
use of newspaper advertising to support the burgeoning music industry,
focussing on the methods of persuasion that concert promoters used in their
attempts to attract an audience.
Michael Heller,
Queen Mary, University of London
'Company Magazines 1878-1935:
origins, roles and functions'
E-mail: M.Heller@qmul.ac.uk
The
rise of the company magazine was coterminous with the rise of the large-scale
organisation both in the US and the UK and indeed can be argued to have been a
contributing factor. The ubiquity of the magazine and the importance that these
were given by managers and workers singles them out as important entities within
the organisation. In addition, from a historiographical perspective, company
magazines are often the first ‘document’ that
the business historian examines in the first stages of analysis of the
organisation. They are both available and accessible, welcoming and informative.
It is the aim of this paper to examine the emergence and development of the
company magazine within British organisations between 1878 and 1935 asking the
questions of what caused these journals to appear and what were their functions
within the organisation. By the 1930s virtually every large-scale organisation
had a company magazine in Britain and large sums of capital and energy were
committed to their operations and success. Using material from a range of
organisations such as the Prudential Assurance Company, Shell Transport and
Trading, the Westminster Bank, the London County Council and The Industrial
Welfare Society, the paper has divided its analysis of company journals into two
periods, 1878-1914 and 1914-35. In much of the first part magazines were limited
to a minority of large-scale organisations and were relatively amateur in
appearance and operation. In the second period magazines became the norm in
these organisations, became much more professional and were often an official
part of the firm, run by salaried personnel. In addition, the reasons for their
origins in both periods differ to some extent. In the former they were a
response to the rapid growth in organisations and (alongside organisational
sport) a disciplinary strategy inspired by the public school model. In the
latter period they were a result of the amalgamations in many sectors in the
British economy, the rise of industrial welfare and the emergence of the Human
Relations Movement in management. In relation to functions the magazines served
an operational role of informing, educating and entertaining and a
structural/strategic one of providing an important platform for the development
of corporate identity and organisational culture, and a site for
the exercise of a softer and more tacit form of managerial power. The new
journal Management and Organizational History is currently compiling a special
edition on the history of the company journal. This paper will form an important
introduction to what is expected to be a very interesting, informative and
dynamic collection of articles.
John Hinks, University
of Leicester, UK
'Book-trade Networks in
England, 1700-1850'
E-mail: john.hinks@virgin.net
My current research
(supported by a British Academy research grant) focuses on the concepts of
‘Community’ and ‘Network’ in the book trade, especially in provincial
English towns, from 1700 to 1850. There is ample evidence that many provincial
booksellers and printers benefited from their trade links with each other and
with the London book trade. Where these connections existed over a period of
time and between a number of book-trade people, they may be considered as trade
communities. Another type of book-trade community is also being studied: those
held together by a particular set of political or religious beliefs, e.g.
Chartists, Quakers, etc. My research examines the key features of both of these
types of book-trade community and also looks at the shorter-term links (usually
less formal than partnerships) between, for example, a number of booksellers and
a printer to share the cost and risk of producing a particular book. The
proposed paper would discuss the key features of book-trade communities and
networks, and would also refer to contacts between the book trade and other
commercial activities in order to supply a wider context.
David Humphrey, Royal College
of Art, UK
'The Gemstone Trade in
Late Medieval Northern Europe'
E-mail: david.humphrey@rca.ac.uk
In the period between c.1250
and c.1450, the demand for gemstones in northern Europe grew at a previously
unknown pace with the French and Valois Burgundian courts requiring ever
increasing quantities not only to feed personal demand but also to fuel
their complex social structures and power networks. In the early part of the period
demand could be satisfied by a combination of acquisition within the local
goldsmithing market and the recycling of stones extracted from existing
items of goldsmiths’ work. As the period progressed, demand rapidly outstripped
the limits of existing routes to acquisition and saw the rise of the goldsmith
as entrepreneur in the gemstone market and the development of middlemen
and brokers working in an international market that linked the major cities
of northern Europe with the Mediterranean, North Africa and beyond. Extant inventories and wills
serve to illustrate the volume of gemstones owned and traded over the course
of the period and the development of identifiable structures in patterns
of acquisition, ownership and the often overlooked importance of loan and
pawn. By the end of the period the uses to which gemstones were put ranged
far beyond their value as visually striking components in pieces of goldsmiths’
work. This paper traces the expansion
of the gemstone trade in northern Europe from essentially local and national
roots to its operation on an international scale. It examines the nature
of the demand for gemstones, the sourcing of specific gemstones and the
interrelationship with the precious metals market. On a trading level it
examines the various roles engaged in bringing gemstones from source to
final setting.
Nora Jiménez,
El Colegio de Michoacan, Mexico
'Business in mold letter.
Book trade networks to New Spain XVI-middle XVIIth centuries'
E-mail: njimenezdweb@mixmail.com
In modern western culture,
books are looked upon as particularly noble objects: nothing less than
the key vehicle for the transmission of civilization and knowledge. And
this noblesse extends out to embrace not only the objects themselves but
also everything associated with them. Yet, in the early modern period,
and largely due to their material nature (as distinct from their cultural
character), books also functioned in trade networks as just one more kind
of merchandise, and book traders behaved much like any other kind of merchant.
The paper I propose contains
the results of a long-term research project centered on the book trade
in New Spain from the 16th to the mid-17th centuries. It focuses on the
traders themselves, because their activities provide the most reliable
sources of information as to which books were sent out to Spain’s royal
territories in the New World and when they were sent. Moreover, this approach
reveals how such trade networks functioned –not only between the Spanish
metropolis and New Spain, but also in Europe more generally– and how, when
all is said and done, they depended on sources of financing, on pre-existing
distribution networks, and on the possibility of obtaining other products
through exchange that were deemed valuable and were sought after by the
higher echelons of European traders. Such merchandise included raw materials
used in textile manufacturing and precious metals. Thus, my work broadens its
scope to include trends in the European book trade that brought books to
Spain and then forwarded them to New Spain via the voyages of the Spanish
Fleet. Commercial nodes on these networks included such important centers
of book production as Antwerp, Florence, Lyon and Venice and involved several
Spanish cities, not only Seville but also Medina del Campo and Salamanca
in the 16th century, and Madrid and Alcalá de Henares in the 17th,
when the network collapsed and had to be reconstructed using other sources
of financing and contacts. The paper also approaches
the often tricky question of merchants’ strategies and business practices,
including speculation, credit, shipping and retailing. Certain social practices
are also reviewed: marriage, biological reproduction, professional diversification
and relationships with established powers. This research has allowed me
to reconstruct the different generations that participated in the emergence
of New Spain’s book trade network into the 17th century, to outline several
of its hierarchical levels, and to define the diverse and changing roles
of production, intermediation and lobbying, etc.
When dealing with the book
trade in Spanish America, one ineluctable topic is the role of the Inquisition,
so my paper explores how the control and vigilance of religious authorities
affected the traders’ activities, and the many tactics to which merchants
had recourse in their relations the authorities of the Inquisition. Though it is true that New
Spain was just a remote corner in this universe of world trade, its very
isolation means that it can serve as a kind of laboratory, in which the
conditions, circumstances and other aspects of the development of the book
trade can be identified more clearly than in the more hectic context of
European exchange which, due to its very density, leaves few spaces through
which we can catch glimpses of the kind of subtle but inexorable developments
that this paper describes. It is clear that New Spain’s
book traders were but modest figures compared to their large-scale Atlantic
and European counterparts, but it is true that without their commercial
activities –limited as they were– and their eagerness for profit, many
fewer books would have found their way to such far-off corners of the New
World, and the process of cultural transference from Europe would have
been a much more difficult and much less successful one.
Michelle Jones, University
College for the Creative Arts, Rochester, UK
'A Performance of Culture
and Commerce: British Fashion Promotion and the Royal Ballet’s American
and Canadian Tours (1949-51)'
E-mail: michelleandmojo@hotmail.com
Between 1949 and 1951 the British
fashion industry used the Sadler’s Wells Ballet tours of America and Canada
as a promotional vehicle. The dancers operated as unofficial ambassadors
by wearing full travelling-wardrobes of 3,000 articles, donated by 145
members of the British Apparel Industry. This responded to the need
for stronger consumer demand for British clothing in the North American
market. Through links formed with the American Merchandising Corporation,
which facilitated ‘tie-ups’ with retailing outlets, this mixture of culture
and commerce was seen to fit the comparatively mature retail ecology of
North America; where attraction and desire were seen as critical to encourage
demand. The use of the ballet company,
an important cultural resource, as mannequins for the British fashion industry
had clear political, cultural and industrial implications. This paper will
offer an analysis of this strategic attempt at mercantile seduction, which
aimed to convert the cultural capital of the ballet into a more commodified
form of economic capital. Using archival research the paper aims to quantify
the extent to which the publicity attending the Ballet and their off-stage
dressing was translated into demand within the American consumer cycle.
The tour will therefore be analysed as an external attempt to structure
meaning and value into British fashion goods, through tracing the tensions
that arose within this path towards transatlantic distribution and consumption. This cultural mediation will
be viewed through an industrial and economic discourse, aligning it with
recent work that challenges more generalised cultural readings by addressing
fashion design through the interplay of manufacture, distribution and display.
This paper will therefore focus on the divergent priorities and economic
attitudes apparent between the political and productive arenas. Through
mapping the conflicting and overlapping contexts of the ballet tour’s promotional
activity, the manipulation of consumer susceptibility is shown to be a
complicated process: not simply a matter of placing clothing onto highly
visible personalities and watching garments fly out of the shops in a flurry
of emulation. Consumer demand was not stimulated simply by the symbolic
mixing of culture and commerce but as this paper will show by a hidden
web of commercial, industrial and political activity.
Pernilla
Jonsson, Uppsala
University and Fredrik Sandgren, Uppsala University, Sweden
'Who dares to innovate?
Debates on retail innovation in the Swedish retail trade press 1950-2000'
E-mail: Fredrik.Sandgren@ekhist.uu.se
In
order to develop of survive every business must be aware of the need to
innovate. The choice of doing so can however be difficult and influence of a
multitude of factors reaching from national and international legislation to the
market structure in a distinct locality and of course the mentality of the
manager of a company. One way of coming to make a choice is to provide you with
information on the pros and cons of adopting a new technology or a new
organisation principle. Here the trade press should have provided a helping
hand. The aim of this paper is to discuss the Swedish debate on innovation
within food retailing in the trade press. Swedish food retailing was and is to a
certain extent characterised by quite small retail companies and organisations
while the large businesses is found within the wholesale sector. For a large
part individual retailers or consumer societies have since the early 1900s been
either tied to the Co-operative society (KF), wholesaling companies within ICA,
or to the wholesaler ASK. Thus many small retailers and consumer societies had
to make individual choices concerning the adaptation of innovations as self
service, modern stock facilities and computerisation. One way of deciding
whether to innovate or not was to read the trade press. By studying three
retailing magazines, one from KF, one from ICA and one from ASK, at three points
in time (early 1950s, mid 1960s and mid 1990s) we will follow some debates on
innovation and find our which innovations that where discussed, and what was
said for and against these innovations. During the periods of study we will
probably concentrate on the discussion of self-service in the 1950s, joint
advertising in the 1960s and computer cash registers in the 1990s. This paper is
the effort of a new project called “A regional and organisational perspective
on diffusion of innovations in the Swedish food trades 1900-2000” that have
funding from The Jan Wallander and Tom Hedelius Foundation, The Tore Browaldh
Foundation, and will run for c. three years.
Samuli Kaislaniemi, University
of Helsinki, Finland
'Modelling the long-distance
correspondence network of the early English East India Company (1600–1630)'
E-mail: samuli.kaislaniemi@helsinki.fi
The surviving ships’ journals
and logs of the English East India Company (EIC) form a hoard of historical
data which is unwieldy due to its sheer size. One tool facilitating its
use is a catalogue compiled by Anthony Farrington and published in 1999,
which also includes details of each EIC voyage – the places where the ships
stopped, and dates when they did so. This information can be, and has been
used for broad historical investigations – such as charting the trading
networks of the EIC (Erikson & Bearman 2006), and recreating South
Atlantic trade winds (Farrington et al. 1997). This paper describes a project
which similarly takes the catalogue as a starting point, with the aim to
model the correspondence network of the early EIC (1600–1630). The data
from the catalogue will be supplemented by more detailed information extracted
from other published and original sources, and a database of the motions
of the EIC fleet will be created. These coordinates will then be fed into
an interactive map, which will display the movements of the EIC fleet in
real time.
Combined with information
on the company’s correspondence – surviving letters, and mentions of letters
in surviving documents – the map will recreate the real routes of the long-distance
correspondence of the early EIC. Such a tool will be invaluable for investigating
the dissemination of knowledge between the EIC headquarters and its merchants
in the East Indies.
Drew Keeling,
University of Zurich, Switzerland
'Atlantic Shipping Company
Strategies and Migration between Europe and the United States, 1900-14'
E-mail: drewkeeling@yahoo.com
Late
nineteenth and early twentieth century transatlantic migration was the most
sizable and ethnically diverse mass transoceanic movement of people ever, and
has long been studied as such by sociologists, economists, and historians.
Scholars have devoted far less attention to the fact that this “Great
Migration” across the labor markets of the North Atlantic was also a huge and
inherently international business, generating, by 1913, about £15 million in
annual revenues for the oceanic transport oligopoly carrying out this tremendous
human relocation. British shipping firms had taken a leading role in the 1850s
and 1860s by establishing new corporate organizations, creating powerful
international networks, and applying innovative steam power, metallurgical and
propulsion technologies to this commerce in human transport. Even after 1900,
when the locus of migrant origins and travel routes shifted away from the
British Isles, and transport competitors elsewhere gained in market share, the
strategies of the British “first-movers” continued to set the tone for the
entire oceanic passenger travel industry. Past histories of U.K. and North
Atlantic shipping in the steamship era have been very heavily focused on freight
carriage, even though passenger traffic was a larger source of income, and most
of the passengers were migrants. Compared to cargo transport, the migrant
traffic business was also riskier, more international, and developed more of a
“retail” character. Three sets of international networks underpinned budget
travel on early twentieth century North Atlantic steamships. Coordinated cartel
arrangements amongst the transport enterprises constrained competition within
ports, allocated market shares, and inhibited fare wars. Governmental entities
which simultaneously protected, stimulated and regulated passenger shipping
lines, also worked with them to develop intertwined networks designed to
facilitate the handling and control of huge crowds flowing along inland routes,
through ports, and across the ocean. A third set of networks were those which
linked centralized passenger departments and port offices of large shipping
corporations to numerous and far-flung steamship agents, who booked passages,
sold tickets, and facilitated movement between villages all across Europe and
the major entry ports of North America. Their end of the business had an
important retail dimension, and was often bundled together with travel,
financial, communication, and employment services. Many of them operated small
shops or offices in their local communities and worked with steamship companies
as a sideline. This paper will be based on an
examination of corporate records of board meetings and correspondence,
particularly of the Cunard company in the Liverpool and competitors in several
other ports, and will compare salient aspects of the decision-making orientation
and strategy revealed there against available information from press articles,
governmental reports, migrant accounts, and other sources, in order to develop a
composite picture of how shipping lines planned for, organized, and marketed to
their migrant travellers. A particular focus will be on the extent to which, in
the transport of migrants, practical management practices developed as integral
elements within consciously planned “wholesale” corporate strategies versus
evolving ad-hoc from the “bottom up.”
John
Killick, University of Leeds, UK
'Jobs
for the Boys: Office Procedures and Administration in an American 19th
century Shipping Line: The Cope Line of Philadelphia - Liverpool Packets,
1820-1880'
E-mail: J.R.Killick@leeds.ac.uk
This
paper examines the records and office methods of an American 19th century
sailing packet
line - the Cope Line of Philadelphia. The line's ships departed on schedule from
Philadelphia to Liverpool and back, almost every month between 1822-1870. Their
archive in the Pennsylvania Historical Society includes not only the standard letterbooks,
and interlocking ledgers, journals and double entry books of a 19th
century merchant house, but also many of the supporting bills and vouchers. The
latter are mostly organised by voyage. i.e. Montezuma, 23rd Voyage. Tonawanda
45th. The line made say 600 voyages between 1822 and 1880 nearly all recorded.
One 18 inch * 12 * 6 grey archival box holds the contents of say 2-4 voyages.
The voyage boxes contain captains' letters, cargo books, freight lists,
manifests, crew lists, disbursement lists, passenger lists, and all the
supporting bills and vouchers for most voyages. For instance the line retained
many returned passenger tickets some of which include intimate messages from
successful Irish migrants in Philadelphia to the relatives they planned to bring
over. You can therefore see very well how the accounts were organised, and what
the partners, captains and clerks had to do. In addition the line left its mark
in the Federal records in Philadelphia, which hold almost complete series of
impost ledgers and crew lists. Unfortunately although there is a great deal
about the partners, there is not much information about the office staff. It
should however be able to check the basics. Much of the work was done by junior
partners i.e. young family members and a few male clerks. However much was in
effect outsourced to other agents. A multitude of Philadelphia firms organised
the building, maintenance and provisioning of the ships in Philadelphia.
Alexander Brown of Baltimore, provided two ships in the line between, 1822 and
1840, and Brown-Shipley, the Liverpool branch of Alexander Brown, acted as the
line's Liverpool agents organising cargoes, and representing the line to the
authorities. Liverpool passenger brokers such as Tapscotts administered much of
the migrant business. Finally the captains superintended the passages and crew,
organised the repairs and provisioning in Liverpool, and assembled all the
Liverpool books and vouchers for return to Philadelphia.
Steve
Koerner, independent scholar,
Canada
'The Rise and Fall of the
Daimler Motor Company'
E-mail: stkvi@shaw.ca
The
Daimler Motor Co. was Britain’s
oldest and also perhaps one of its least studied automobile manufacturers.
Launched in 1892, this company was created as the result of a licensing
agreement between German auto pioneer Gottlieb Daimler and British mechanical
engineer Frederick Sims. The company went on to become, together
with Rolls-Royce and Bentley, suppliers of luxury cars for the British
aristocracy and sundry international plutocrats. It also produced
buses that equipped municipal fleets throughout Britain and the Empire.
In 1910 Daimler was purchased by BSA (Birmingham Small Arms), an armaments
firm that had diversified into bicycle and motor cycle manufacturing and
later into steel fabrication and machine tools. Daimler would remain
BSA’s single most important subsidiary until it was sold to Jaguar Cars
in 1960.
During the First World
War Daimler built a variety of armoured motor vehicles and aero engines
for the British military as it would again in the Second World War.
After 1945, the lucrative munitions contracts having dried up, Daimler
found itself suffering from a profit squeeze. The market for the
expensive limousines that were its mainstay had nearly vanished in post-war
austerity Britain. In response, at the initiative of Sir Bernard
Docker, BSA’s Chairman and Managing Director, during the late 1940s and
early 1950s, vast amounts of investment were poured into Daimler’s Coventry
factory to allow the introduction of an entirely new line of cheaper priced
automobiles designed to try and break into Britain’s burgeoning middle
class motor car market. The new cars were not
a great success and Daimler was soon surrounded by a sea of red ink.
As this proposed presentation will explain, the failure of Docker’s strategy
would have far-reaching implications for BSA and Daimler, starting with
a boardroom putsch launched against Sir Bernard in 1956. These events
also raise questions about the nature and character of Britain’s Board
room management during the time in question.
Katherine V. Kreuter, independent
scholar, UK
'Shopgirls and Secretaries:
How and why Gordon Selfridge created novel opportunities for women in retail
employment'
E-mail: kvkreuter@btinternet.com
Much has been written about
the way that department stores revolutionised the lives of women, but I
am to look specifically at the women who were employed by one of London’s
pioneering department stores, Selfridges. It has been said that Selfridge
brought with him from American new working practices and thereby impacted
the way many shop workers were treated in the UK. He is credited with stopping
the "living in" arrangements for clerks and with banning the servility
normally expected of workers to their superiors. I would like to investigate
if this is really true or if, like so much written by and for department
stores, it is as much a "product" being sold as any bar of soap. As well as exploring Selfridge’s
actual treatment of women under his employ, I’d place this within the appropriate
social and economic context. So I would examine the position of the shopgirl
in early 20th century London. These women often occupied a nebulous role,
subservient but not servants, employed yet not quite independent. Their
growing numbers heightened unease about the growing emancipation of women,
and raised questions about their sexual availability. Many of these questions
were reflected in the "shop novels" of the period, from Zola’s Au Bonheur
des Dames to Arnold Bennett’s Hugo. But shopgirls weren’t the
only women employed in the department store, and I will be using evidence
from the Selfridge archives to examine the way secretaries and other back-office
female employees were treated. An important source here is the diary kept
by Selfridge’s secretary, Miss Hilda Mepham, and her role in bringing the
first Selfridge biography to print.
Mitch Larson, Ashland University,
US
‘What Are We Selling?’
British Affairs and the British Information Service in New York, late 1950s
to early 1960s
E-mail: mitchlarson@yahoo.com
My paper will look at the journal
"British Affairs" which the British Information Service in New York published
during the late 1950s and early 1960s. The presentation examines
the way that publication changed during the tumultuous five years from
1957-1962 as Britain’s role(s) in "Europe" adjusted to the change from
that of victorious wartime power whose people "never had it so good" to
that of excluded trade partner after the birth of the European Economic
Community in the middle 1950s. As quickly became clear on both sides
of the Channel, Britain found itself increasingly marginalized economically
as "The Six" flexed their collective economic muscles. Tentatively
titled "What Are We Selling?" the paper will show how the British attempted
to make Americans, especially, aware of the benefits of trading with Britain
as well as other more general political and economic news from the Sterling
area. Initially the journal featured articles aimed at guiding American
businessmen toward doing business with British firms; as time passed, the
journal began to include brief historical pieces to emphasize Britain’s
cultural heritage as well as broader reports of British activities (often
humanitarian or developmental) around the globe. What caused this
shift in focus? The paper will put this issue into focus by contextualizing
the five-year run of "British Affairs" and scrutinize closely the actual
contents of the journal to determine its intended audiences and the message(s)
the publishers wished to communicate.
Giuseppe M. Longoni,
University of Milan and Alberto Rinaldi, University of Modena and Reggio
Emilia, Italy
'Industrial Policy and
Artisan Firms in Italy. 1945-1971'
E-mail: rinaldi.alberto@unimore.it
One of the most striking differences
between Italy and the other major industrial countries concerns the size
distribution of firms. In fact, in the 1990s a staggering 58% of employees
in manufacturing in Italy worked in small firms with fewer than 50 employees
and 26% in micro-firms with fewer than 10 employees, while the corresponding
figures were only 18% and 4% in the USA, 20% and 6% in the UK, 12% and
5% in Germany, and 31% and 5% in France. Some scholars (e.g., Becattini,
1998) argued that state support was negligible and irrelevant to
small firms, whose success was largely market-driven. Conversely, Weiss
(1988) maintained that the state played a central role in post war advancement
of Italian artisan and small firms, while others (Piore and Sabel, 1984;
Arrighetti and Seravalli, 1997) emphasised the role of regional and local
institutions that provided artisan and small firms with a range of services
and infrastructure that prompted their innovation capacity. This paper investigates –
relying on a variety of sources, but principally on the Italian Parliamentary
Papers and published and archival materials of the two major artisan associations
in the country – the nature, extent and effects of state policy for artisanat
from 1945 to 1971. We show – contrary to Becattini
and in line with Weiss – that the Italian state carried out a policy for
artisanat whose extent had no comparison in Europe. Such a policy was structured
on the provision, on the one hand, of lower tax and employers’ contribution
and welfare benefits at reduced premiums and, on the other hand, of ‘substitutive
factors’: soft loans, services and promotional initiatives by proper state
agencies. However, we reject Weiss’s
thesis that government action on behalf of artisanat was not the response
to the demands of pressure groups but was independently conceived and unfolded
by the major governing party – the Christian Democracy – as a coherent
implementation of its ideologically based social project aimed at enlarging
small ownership in the country. On the contrary, we argue – in line with
Arrighetti and Seravalli – that the action of artisan association played
an important role in shaping the actual scope of artisan policy. Baccini (2002) observed that,
contrary to other European countries, Italian artisan policy did not boost
firms’ growth size but pushed them to remain small as the condition to
enjoy state benefits was not to the exceed the size limits established
by the law to be qualified as artisans. This can help to explain the prevalence
of small and micro firms in Italy. However, this must not induce
us to infer that the aim of artisan policy was merely to protect an uneasy
stratum of marginal firms. Our thesis is rather that the state’s action
played a twofold role: partly protecting marginal firms and partly prompting
the most promising ventures. Thus, benefits concerning
welfare contributions were indistinctly addressed to all artisans, while
those concerning income tax and family allowances were explicitly earmarked
to smaller (and weaker) artisan firms. These can therefore be rightly considered
as measures aimed principally at defending a stratum of marginal firms. Yet, other actions turned
out to be very selective and prompted innovation. This is the case of the
soft loan scheme: in the period under investigation such loans reached
only 14% of eligible artisans and flowed mostly to those areas of the country
where artisan firms flourished and multiplied. Loans concentrated in the
most prosperous regions of the North and the Centre, while the backward
South was clearly penalized. Similarly, no more than 5%
of Italian artisan firms – chosen among the most promising ones – benefited
of the services provided by the state agencies offering technical, artistic
and commercial assistance.
Peter Maw, Manchester Metropolitan
University, UK
'American Merchants in
London and Manchester: Business Networks in the Anglo-American Textile
Trades, 1750-1825'
E-mail: P.Maw@mmu.ac.uk
Drawing
on business records in both the US and Britain, the proposed paper aims to
refine our understanding of the business organisation of Anglo-American trade
from 1750-1825, providing a comprehensive analysis of the commercial strategies
of American and English textile merchants, including the migrations of American
merchants to the leading commercial centres of London and Manchester. Histories
of the English textile industries, at least for the period before 1815, have
tended to focus primarily on internal developments, especially in those sectors
such as technology and finance that are well documented in British primary
sources. However, increases in the scale and scope of England’s international
were determined as much by external developments as with the adoption of new
modes of production in the modernising industrial counties of Lancashire and
Yorkshire. By 1750, American traders—the wealthy planters of the southern
colonies and the shipping merchants of the middle and northern colonies—generally
initiated the commercial transactions with England, utilizing the services a
small group of commission agents in London, and to a lesser extent, the outports,
who sold American plantation staples on the account of the American principals
and filled their orders for European and Asian manufactured goods. As the scale
of Anglo-American trade increased in the second half of the eighteenth century
and the first quarter of the nineteenth, especially in northern English woollen
and cotton textiles, American importers, still acting as principals, adopted a
range of commercial strategies to tap the wealth of goods produced in England.
First, the American dry-goods merchants began to undertake lengthy commercial
tours of the manufacturing regions. This enabled them to bypass the general
commission merchants of London and to import goods directly from England’s
manufacturing regions that had already achieved a remarkable degree of
concentration by the mid-eighteenth century. Second, increases in textile
production, encouraged American importers to strengthen their English
connections by stationing a permanent partner in England. This spurred the
emergence of core of American merchants in Manchester by 1825, a development
insufficiently addressed in the current literature. The commercial migrations by
American merchants played a key role in shaping the formation of new business
networks in Anglo-American trade in this period. Their commercial tours
accelerated the emergence of a core of new English export firms in the inland
towns of northern England from 1750, allowing merchants in ports to specialise
in the provision of shipping and finance, while from 1800, the settlement of
American buyers in London and the manufacturing districts allowed Americans, in
competition with commercial migrants from Germany and Greece, to purchase
textiles on a more flexible basis.
Paolo Di Martino, University
of Manchester, and Michelangelo Vasta, University of Siena, Italy
‘Creative destruction’
or ‘destructive creativity’? Italian Firms’ Approach to Industrial Failure
and Surviving Strategies, 1920s-1950s
E-mail: P.Dimartino@manchester.ac.uk
About a century ago, Schumpeter’s
"creative destruction" idea changed forever the conception of industrial
failure, bankruptcies, and companies exit from the market. In Schumpeter’
view, failures and exits are neither signs of an economy’s weakness, nor
the result of Darwinian selection among companies competing in a static steady-state-equilibrium scenario. Rather, in a dynamic economic framework
witnessing entrepreneur-driven transformations of technologies, of productive
processes, and of markets structure, industrial failure is the fundamental
"reshuffling" devise necessary to adapt the economy to the succession of
different technological regimes. However, this optimist view
relies on the assumption that norms and procedures governing bankruptcy
and failure are able to operate as efficient screening devices, in other
words they are able to select between "worthy" entrepreneurs and companies
and to give them a second chance. As a matter of fact, given the irreducible
level of risk of any economic activity, waves of bankruptcy generated by
the creative destruction phenomenon, involve "good" progressive firms as
well as "bad" conservative (and/or incapable and fraudulent) entrepreneurs
and companies. This consideration shifts
the attention from the macroeconomic Schumpeterian view to a microeconomic
perspective, raising a natural question: to what extent were bankruptcy
laws and procedures able to accommodate the beneficial impact of creative
destruction by providing efficient screening devices and re-starting mechanisms?
This paper investigates this
so-far neglected problem focussing on the Italian economy between 1911
and the 1950s. Previous studies showed that the formal structure of Italian
laws and procedures reflected a punitive approach and was not suitable
to play a supportive role (Di Martino, 2005). The inability to provide
instruments able to select among failing companies and to promote restart
was particularly evident during the major banking crises between the 1880s
and the 1930s. (Di Martino, 2004). This paper considers the issue
of whether in Italy efficient institutional mechanisms allow natural creative
destruction to select among companies and entrepreneurs, or whether inefficient
devices created an artificial room for manoeuvre for "destructive creativity",
i.e. un-official ways for un-worthy economic agents to survive. Using official data at national
level as well as archival information on Milan and its provinces, this
paper aims at providing answers at the following questions:
1) What was the quantitative
dimension of the insolvency problem in Italy?
2) What sort of institutional
instruments were available to allow company to re-start after insolvency
or to avoid it?
3) How efficient were these
institutions?
4) Did un-official institutions
exist as well? How wide-spread was this phenomenon?
This paper contains the first
results of an extremely innovative research. On the one hand, it aims at
linking together the Schumpeterian idea of creative destruction with the
analysis of the working of the institutional (legal) structure. Both subjects
have been largely investigated by economic historians and economists alike,
but so far no attempt has been made to analyse the two issues together.
On the other hand, this paper looks at the controversial story of the evolution
of Italian capitalism, using a new theoretical perspective as well as new
evidence. Building-up on the idea that the analysis of agents sitting
on companies’ boards is fundamental to understand the evolution of the
industrial structure (Baccini and Vasta 1997, Rinaldi and Vasta 2005),
this paper looks at this element to investigate whether "creative destruction"
contributed to reinforce the bases of Italian capitalism, or whether capitalists
managed to defend their established positions at the detriment of macroeconomic
efficiency.
John Mercer, Queen Mary,
University of London, UK
'Selling Suffragism: Campaign
Retailing by the Militant Women’s Suffrage Organisations'
E-mail: jj_mercer@msn.com
This
paper examines the integrated commodifying and retailing ventures of the
militant women’s suffrage organisations, the Women’s Social & Political
Union (WSPU) and the Women’s Freedom League (WFL). It discusses how these
organisations established campaign “brands” that were applied to a range of
purchasable commodities. The paper then examines the retailing activities of the
WSPU and WFL, charting the opening of campaign shops in London and nationwide
from 1908. The functions of these shops are considered, ranging from their roles
as propaganda distributors and income-generators to spaces for meetings and
office-work – before consideration is given to the formats and identities of
these shops. Particularly, the paper will focus on the conventional business
identities adopted by most suffrage shops and apparently encouraged by the
central leaderships. WSPU and WFL shops centred their formats around acts of
purchase, and embraced the superficialities of mainstream commercial activity:
their promotion, layout, visual displays, attractive decoration, and range of
commodities all pointed to their position alongside conventional shops in the
mainstream business community. The significance of these appropriated identities
both in terms of WSPU and WFL militancy and the utilisation of women’s
perceived role as consumers is then discussed, concluding that these retailing
ventures used commercial conventionalities to broadcast a de-radicalised
identity and utilise the gendered nature of consumption to draw women into the
suffrage movement.
Ichiro Michishige, Toyo
University, Japan
'The Shopkeeper and Consumer
Society in Eighteenth Century London'
E-mail: mitisige@toyonet.toyo.ac.jp
In this paper, based
on investigation of clothing retailers in eighteenth century London, I
try to clarify the role of retailers in the consumer revolution and discern
the degree of modernity of eighteenth century London retail shops. In eighteenth century
England, there were splendid urban growth and development of shopping area
in many towns and retailers of these areas began to display novel goods
at their shop windows and tried to sell fashionable things. Especially
in London, shopkeepers strongly sensitive to fashion trends. A key to their
business success was in understanding fashion trends and keeping up with
latest fashions. Active business conduct going along with fashion was decisive
for shopkeepers in London and they played an important role in diffusion
of new fashion trends. I have
investigated some trade cards of London clothing retailers and business
records of a London milliner. They sold diverse clothes and ornaments,
but focused their business on preparing and arranging fashionable dresses
and hats. The main concern of Mary Holl whose records I have investigated
was to provide sales of lace or other ornaments and the service of stitching
these ornaments into clothes as well as washing and mending clothes. They
tried to provide customer satisfaction by offering services which adopted
the latest fashions which also suited customers. It is also
clear from records of Mary Holl or other documents that the outer and inner
appearance of shops were important elements to attract potential customers.
Show-window displayed diverse goods and a tasteful shop façade of
shops could lure customers into the shops. Inside of many shops there was
a special space for the favourite customers to rest while shopping. Shopping
became a leisure activity in the late eighteenth century; it was a very
important business strategy for shopkeepers to enhance customer satisfaction
by preparing comfortable space, especially for female customers. In the late eighteenth
century at the onset of the consumer society, shopkeepers in London such
as Mary Holl whose customers were mainly the middling sorts of people played
a very important role in increasing the consumption and spreading fashion
trends.
Peter
Miskell, University
of Reading, UK
'Uniliver and its Brands
Since the 1950s: Competitive Threats and Strategic Response'
E-mail: p.m.miskell@reading.ac.uk
This
paper will examine the development of Unilever’s marketing and branding
strategies over the second half of the twentieth century within the context of
two major challenges to the strength and profitability of its brands in its home
(European) markets. The first of these came from increasing competition. The
1950s and 1960s saw leading US multinationals, most notably Procter and Gamble,
invest heavily in Western Europe with the result that Unilever’s market shares
in product categories such as household detergents were severely eroded. A
second challenge facing Unilever’s brands came not from rival producers, but
(vertically) from further down the supply chain with the growing market power of
retailers. Given the growing power of supermarkets in both the USA and Western
Europe in this period, why did neither Unilever nor Procter and Gamble seek to
exploit their own corporate names in branding and advertising imagery?
Did Unilever tend to have different brands for each of its products, or
did brand names stretch across product ranges? How far was Unilever able to
extend its brand names into related product areas or across borders? Indeed, who
made the key decisions about the marketing of Unilever’s brands: local
managers in national markets or subsidiary companies, or global marketing
executives at the corporate head quarters?
Ian Mitchell, independent
scholar, UK
'Bazaars and Covered Marts:
Innovation in Non-food Retailing in the Early Nineteenth Century'
E-mail: ianandmarym@tiscali.co.uk
The
bazaar was a phenomenon of the 1810s and 1820s.
The Soho Bazaar in London, opened in 1816, served as a model for many
others. It provided shop counters,
let by the day, to a wide variety of traders. Supporters of bazaars argued that
they promoted female and domestic industry by providing an outlet for the
products of this, without the need to rent shop premises; that they served the
public interest by promoting cheapness; and that they were ‘respectable’.
According to critics they were merely ‘a company or association of
hawkers and pedlars’, where goods might be cheap, but were liable to be
shoddy. Some saw them as a threat
to established retailers, and suggested that, while fashionable, they also
promoted immorality. For one
critic, a bazaar was simply a ‘perpetual fair’. This last comment may be
quite close to the mark. Fairs were
not necessarily moribund in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
though they were changing their nature. Some,
at least, remained significant as places where a wide range of cloth, clothing
and household goods could be compared and purchased.
And many were famous, or notorious, as places of entertainment.
New premises to accommodate traders at fairs – and at other times of
the year – were built in several towns and cities in the early nineteenth
century. Examples include the Union
and Commercial Halls at Chester and the New Yorkshire Cloth Hall and Commercial
Bazaar at Warrington. In other
places, the building of improved market facilities provided the opportunity to
include a bazaar or a covered pedlars’ market.
But whatever name was used, the intention seems to have been to provide
more convenient, and perhaps respectable, facilities for small retailers selling
basic non-food goods to a growing popular market. It is increasingly clear that
the first half of the nineteenth century saw considerable innovation and growth
in retailing. The bazaar
phenomenon, and the associated commercial halls and covered marts, was one
aspect of this. In some instances
they may provide a transitional format between the fair and the department store
or bazaar store. Others were
perhaps a precursor of the late nineteenth century covered market hall.
But bazaars have been little studied and the surviving evidence for how
they operated is quite limited. This
paper offers a general survey of bazaars and similar institutions both in London
and the provinces, and sets them in the wider context of early nineteenth
century changes in retail practice.
Ian
Ormerod, independent
scholar, UK
'Shops and Cash Registers:
Mechanised Accounting before the Computer'
E-mail: ian@ormerod.uk.net
In
the last two decades of the 19th century came a development which
influenced the way retailers managed their businesses, controlled their finances
and introduce new ways of marketing. The invention and development of the cash
register and the way in which mechanical and electromechanical accounting
systems influenced modern marketing has so far gone largely unrecorded. This
presentation will look at the invention of the cash register, its development,
the production and marketing philosophy and the resulting influence on
businesses in Great Britain in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. The inventors and their patents provide an insight into how
businessmen often had to develop their own tools to overcome dishonesty and at
the same time provide new ways of advertising and marketing their goods.
Contemporary glass slides and original photographs, supplemented by movie film
from 1920, provide a view of shops and merchants which have long since
disappeared. The conference delegates will not only be able to see photographs
of these old machines but will be able to examine and operate original machines
from the period 1879 to 1971. Drawing
on extant documents in the presenter’s collection of material from The
National Cash Register Company, and a collection of machines dating from 1879,
this presentation will provide some surprising insights into international,
national and local trade and the benefits to customers and the merchants alike.
David Patmore, Sheffield
University, UK
'The Business of Musical
Culture: the British Record Industry and its International Influence, 1925-1932'
E-mail: D.Patmore@sheffield.ac.uk
This
presentation will constitute a case study of the two major British recording
companies, the Gramophone Company and the Columbia Graphophone Company - each
with an increasing international reach - during a critical period in the
evolution of the recording industry, 1925-1932. It will focus particularly upon
their work in the field of the recording of classical music. This period is
bounded initially by the introduction of electrical recording, through which
music could at last be recorded with a reasonable degree of verisimilitude. As a
result of this technological innovation the market for recordings greatly
expanded, in turn driving considerable competition between rival labels. The end
of the period under review is bounded by the Crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great
Depression, which severely restricted sales and so led to the merger of the two
companies under scrutiny. This resulted in the creation of EMI (the last
remaining multi-national company devoted to sound recording), and an effective
monopoly in the field of classical music recording. Using detailed material from
the EMI Archives the presentation will examine the extraordinary volume of
growth achieved by these companies during the later part of the 1920s, the
reasons for and nature of their merger, and the ensuing consequences. It will
consider the rôles of the two key players leading these organisations –
Alfred Clarke of the Gramophone Company and Louis Sterling of Columbia
Graphophone – and the effects of increasing internationalisation and monopoly
not only upon British musicians but upon received ideas relating to musical
interpretation both during this period and beyond.
Ed Petkus Jr, Ramapo
College of New Jersey, US
'The Marketing of Alcoholic
Beverages During Prohibition in the United States, 1920-1933: A Value-Chain
Analysis'
E-mail: epetkus@ramapo.edu
This paper examines the marketing
dynamics of alcoholic beverages in the United States during the Prohibition
years of 1920-1933, when the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution prohibited
the manufacture, sale, and distribution of alcoholic beverages. Specifically,
the applies the value-chain model (Porter 1985) to explicate the strategic
and tactical marketing functions that drove the value delivery process
and resulted in an elaborate and extensive "underground" marketing system.
This paper argues that core value-delivery functions, including inbound
logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing and sales, and service
all took on new forms during Prohibition, resulting in a fully-functioning,
yet illegal, marketing system. Illegal domestic production
("moonshining") and distribution (smuggling and "bootlegging"), retail
networks ("speakeasies"), and elaborately encoded forms of marketing communication
were some of the unique value-chain elements that emerged. In addition
to the modification of the primary value-chain activities, support activities
such as general administration and human resource management consisted
largely of establishing and managing elaborate networks of bribery and
protection. The fact that the actual consumption of alcoholic beverages
was legal during this time both facilitated and complicated the marketing
and distribution dynamics. Ultimately, the impossibility of enforcement
and the rise of organized crime that was attributed to the illegal alcohol
trade resulted in the repeal of Prohibition in 1933.
Andrew Popp, Royal Holloway,
University of London, UK
'Commercial Travelling
in England before 1850'
E-mail: andrew@popp.fsworld.co.uk
This
paper will use a range of archival and other primary sources to explore the
timing and character of the emergence of modern commercial travellers and
travelling in England before 1850. Hitherto, historical studies of commercial
travelling in England have concentrated on the period from the late
nineteenth-century onwards. In contrast, the earlier years have been relatively
neglected, with the traditional peddler or bagman commanding far more scholarly
attention. In fact the roles of the bagman and the modern commercial travelling
are very far removed from each other and should not be confused. Bagmen
typically sold from stock petty quantities of goods to final consumers for
immediate delivery and for cash. Bagmen also typically worked solely on their
own accounts. In contrast, commercial travellers generated far larger volumes of
trade with multiple customers who typically were other businesses, primarily
other wholesalers and retailers. Travellers sold from samples and pattern books
for future delivery. Credit typically played a much larger role than cash in
this trade. Travellers were typically also employees of factors, merchants or
manufacturers. Commercial travelling has played and continues to play a very
important role in the emergence of modern, industrialized consumer societies.
The paper will argue that commercial travellers of this description were active
on English roads from at least the late eighteenth-century onwards. The paper
will seek to explore the emergence of this distinctive figure of modern society
and economy. As noted, the paper will use a range of sources. Company archives
from industries including pottery, hardware, pins and haberdashery and
comprising journey books, letters and diaries will allow for a detailed
understanding of how travellers actually fulfilled their role and how they
experienced their work. Journalism, speeches and novels will be used to create a
complementary picture of the growing place of commercial travel in the
consciousness of an industrializing nation, reinforcing how at a relatively
early date commercial travellers were an established feature of commercial and
popular life in England. In advancing both original empirical knowledge and
offering a fresh perspective on the evolution of the distribution system of
England during industrialization, the paper responds to a number of themes
included in the call for this conference, including; ‘middlemen’ and
wholesalers, trade, consumers and consumption, knowledge transfer, and
commercial innovation and entrepreneurship.
John Quail, University of
York, UK
'Marketing and the Integration
of the Firm: Discussions by Writers on Management in the US and UK in the
Interwar Years'
E-mail: jq504@york.ac.uk
Marketing
can be understood historically either in isolation or as a function of the firm
influenced by and influencing in turn other parts of the firm. Studies that take
marketing as a distinct function tend to produce histories of marketing
techniques and approaches. Understood institutionally, the focus of study
becomes the wider reasons for the emergence of marketing and the demands it
makes on firm structure and the control of the firm. This paper takes the latter
approach and examines some work by management writers in the interwar years.
Writing at a time when the modern conception of marketing was developing these
writers were conscious variously of the need to create demand, to forecast
demand, to influence production to meet demand and to balance operations across
the firm using planning and budgetary control. In other words the shift to a
marketing conception were seen to bring new complexities to the firm and
accelerate the adoption of structures and techniques that could control it.
This
paper was written as part of the theoretical development of a York University
Management School research project, financed by the British Academy, which
applies a balanced scorecard approach to appraising the historic development of
management capacity in UK firms.
Jim Quinn, University of
Dublin, Ireland and Leigh Sparks, University of Stirling, UK
'The Evolution of British
Grocery Wholesaling: 1930–2006'
E-mail: james.quinn@tcd.ie
In
the 1930s Britain had an extensive network of around 2,000 grocery wholesalers.
These mostly serviced local and regional customer bases of independent retailers
that accounted for 54% of the national grocery market. A significant number of
these wholesalers had their origins in the revolution in distribution that had
taken place in the second half of the 19th century, although some
could trace their roots to the 1700s. However, by 2006 grocery wholesaling had
been transformed. The wholesalers’ share of market via independent traders had
declined to under 15% and the business format had been transformed into cash and
carry and voluntary group trading. Furthermore, the number of wholesaling
outlets had fallen to below 600 sites, most of which were controlled by a small
number of large firms such as Booker, Palmer Harvey and McLane and Bestway. The
paper is drawn from a recent study of the evolution of British grocery
wholesaling and tracks its structural evolution over a 75+ year period.
It sets out to examine two fundamental questions: what were the main
explanatory drivers of evolution and was there any discernable patterns of
process? A number of empirical drivers were observed to be significant over
time. Among the most interesting
findings were that British grocery wholesaling experienced its most significant
structural change over the 1948 to 1964 period and that the primary stimulus for
this change came from government activism, not technology. The research strategy
was multi-level, multi-modal and longitudinal, using a case-based methodology,
and is akin in method and perspective to the contextualist approach developed by
Andrew Pettigrew and his colleagues for the Warwick studies on corporate change.
The data were gathered between 2002 and 2006, through archival material
and personal interviews. Data
collection was aided by the presence of a significant volume of secondary
material available from both archival and academic sources.
A particular trade source (the Institute of Grocery Distribution reports
on Grocery Wholesaling started in 1979 and published almost annually since) has
been assembled as a data source in one place, apparently, for the first time.
The main source used has been the trade magazine The Grocer (see similar use in
Shaw et al 2004 and Alexander et al 2005), which has been read in its entirety
from 1930 onwards with all references to wholesalers or wholesaling extracted to
form a core part of the narrative of the full case.
Alex Ritchie, National Archives,
UK
'Researching Business History
through the National Register of Archives'
E-mail: alex.ritchie@nationalarchives.gov.uk
The
National Register of Archives (NRA) has been systematically recording manuscript
material relating to British history since 1945. It has traditionally been
strong in areas such as the personal papers of politicians and other public
figures, as well as family and estate collections. However, in recent years it
has also enhanced its coverage of business records and now records the content
and whereabouts of the records of over 31,000 enterprises of all sizes. This
information has largely been drawn from details submitted by repositories as
part of their overall contribution to the NRA. It is also based on the results
of individual and industry-based surveys conducted by the Business Archives
Council and by the Historical Manuscripts Commission. This core of information
on business records is supplemented by other material such as the personal
papers of individual merchants and businessmen and by the records of over 1,500
trade and employers organisations. Over time the ability of the NRA to identify
and describe businesses and their records has improved considerably. The
coverage of business has also benefited from general improvements in the
collection and delivery of information. Increasingly, there is access, through
the Internet, to online catalogues and descriptions of records. This applies not
only to collections in the UK, but to material that has been deposited overseas.
There remain areas that need further attention, in particular the NRA’s
coverage of the corporate archive sector remains patchy. There are also problems
in tracing the present whereabouts of companies whose records were surveyed 20
or 30 years ago. However, the overall picture is one of steady, incremental
improvement.
Anna Ryzhova,St Petersburg
State University of Economy and Finance, Russia
'Comparing the Activities
of Royal/Dutch Shell based on the production sharing agreements in Russia
and Indonesia'
E-mail: AnnaR2@yandex.ru
A
production sharing agreement (PSA) is
a
commercial contract between a foreign investor and a host government that
replaces country's tax and license regimes. There are some principles underlying
the PSA: sharing is made not on profit but on the base of production; the
contractor is responsible for the execution of operations, and provides
technical assistance and carries the risk of all exploration costs. Since 1966,
the Production Sharing agreement (PSA) has been the principal form of
cooperation with foreign oil companies for petroleum exploration and production
in Indonesia. The oil exploration activities increased after the PSA was
introduced. The experience of Indonesia became a valuable model for other
countries including Russia. In the beginning of nineteenths Russia opened its
gas and oilfields for foreign investors. The government had to choose tax
regulations to be applied for foreign investors. Analyzing the experience of
oil-exporting counties, the Russian government made a decision to use a
production sharing agreement. The conditions of the agreement previously used in
Indonesia became the base for legislation. By the volume of investment the most
important projects of Royal Dutch/Shell in Russia are the Salym oilfields in
Siberia and Sakhalin-II. The exploration of Sakhalin-II
is under the conditions of the PSA. The oilfield is the reason for the existence
of the Sakhalin Energy Investment Co., owned by Royal Dutch/Shell (55%), Mitsui
(25%), and Mitsubishi (20%). Worth approximately 10 billion dollars, the second
phase of Sakhalin-II is the single largest investment decision in the history of
Royal Dutch/Shell, as well as the single largest foreign direct investment in
Russia's history. Sakhalin-II is also the largest integrated oil and gas project
in the world. The development of the project, however, faces a number of
difficulties. In 2006 unsatisfactory ecological performance proved by results of
independent expertise made further exploration of this oilfield by foreign
investors doubtful. Another reason for the negative reaction of the Russian
government to this project is the general disappointment in production sharing
agreements. The aim of this paper is to compare the activities of
Royal/Dutch Shell based on the
production sharing agreements in
Russia and Indonesia. Focusing on the previous experience of Shell in Indonesia
we try to analyse current difficulties with the development of Sakhalin-II and
predict the future of this project.
Nicole Robertson, University
of Nottingham, UK
'Production Without Profit:
The Co-operative Movement as an Employer of Labour'
E-mail: ahznr@exmail.nottingham.ac.uk
The co-operative movement
has often described itself as "the watchdog for the consumer". However,
another objective of co-operative economic organisation concerned self-employment,
which it defined as the ‘provision of regular employment under good conditions
of labour’. By the twentieth century, the co-operative movement
was engaged in a world-wide exchange of products which, it was argued,
benefited consumers and workers alike. The movement was engaged in
the production, manufacture and wholesaling of goods for the consumer,
employing a large number of people to carry out this work. By the
mid-1950s, in Britain alone, the movement employed almost 400,000 workers.
As such, many people came into contact with the co-operative movement not
only as members or customers of their local retail society, but also as
employees of the organisation. Focusing on the period
1918-1960, this paper examines the relationship between the co-operative
movement and its workers. It explores this subject from two
main angles. Firstly, it considers the nature of the relationship
between the consumer and the employee within co-operative organisations.
Secondly, it explores the relationship between the co-operative movement
and trade unions. The notion of "workers
and consumers in partnership", the title given to A.E Oram’s 1950s pamphlet,
masks tensions between these two parties. Such tensions are explored
in the first section of this paper. The co-operative movement encouraged
its employees to be actively involved in the management of individual societies,
but feared that this would lead to workers fixing wages and conditions
at the expense of the consumer. It was an organisation that was committed
to providing fair hours of work for its employees, yet it also had a duty
to its consumer-members to provide convenient shopping hours. The second section of
this paper explores how the co-operative movement created an image of itself
as an employer that provided the best terms and conditions for its workers.
An examination of this image reveals that in some respects the co-operative
movement did lead in this field. However, this image was one that
was challenged by trade unions and the workers they represented.
The relationship between co-operators and trade unionists has received
very little academic attention, yet this provides an interesting angle
in labour movement history. Although the co-operative movement insisted
all its employees joined a trade union, relations between the two organisations
did not always run smoothly, e.g. during the General Strike of 1926.
Janette Rutterford, Open
University, UK
'The Company Prospectus:
Marketing Shares on the London Stock Exchange'
E-mail: J.Rutterford@open.ac.uk
Today’s new issue prospectuses
are lengthy documents, with risk warnings attached and contingent liabilities
outlined. Yet, these detailed prospectuses are rarely seen by the
ultimate investors. Investors nowadays are lucky to see a ‘mini’
prospectus, and rely instead on stockbroker reports or media comment for
their investment decisions. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
however, the new issue prospectus was a major marketing tool, printed in
large numbers, reproduced in newspapers across the country and aimed specifically
at retail investors. Company chairmen and promoters, merchant
bankers, lawyers, accountants and stockbrokers, sometimes with literary
experts, collaborated to produce interesting, reassuring, optimistic and
sometimes creative documents to attract investors. This paper builds on previous
research on financial information available to Victorian investors and
on the role of the Stock Exchange in company financing. It explores the
history of the new issue prospectus on the London Stock Exchange from the
advent of the limited liability company to the stock market crash of 1929.
In particular, the paper examines the changing content of the prospectus
over time, as new regulations required improved disclosure; as the increased
frequency of new issues led to the establishment of market ‘norms’; and
as the types of securities issued changed from ordinary shares to senior
securities and less wealthy investors were targeted. Particular emphasis
is given to the importance of industry and geographic data; the choice
of capital structure, the quality of accounting information, details of
directors and their pay, the role of the financial institutions in underwriting,
sponsoring and marketing, as well as the types of financial information
and the presence of auditors’ or valuers’ reports. The paper traces
how financial disclosure was in advance of regulatory requirements, being
driven by the need to provide valuation metrics for would-be investors.. The paper relies on archives
of the new issue prospectuses themselves, on press comment, and on correspondence
files relating to company security listings on the London Stock Exchange.
A particularly rich source of data is available in merchant bank archives,
such as Rothschild, Barings, and Hambro. In particular, the Hambro
archives include a number of correspondence files between Everard Hambro
and company chairmen, with various drafts of the new issue prospectuses
concerned and related discussions on legal, financial, accounting, marketing
and remuneration issues. These archives highlight how the prospectus
was a compromise between putting the best possible marketing gloss on the
company concerned, satisfying Stock Exchange and other regulatory requirements,
and adhering to market ‘norms’. The final product reflected both
the preferences of the ‘paternal capitalist’ chairmen for good publicity
and cheap financing, and those of the financial community for consistency
with previous issues and adherence to Stock Exchange rules and regulations.
Unlike company promoters, merchant bankers such as Hambro had a limited
marketing role, relying on company chairmen to provide the necessary company
narrative and to produce potential investor lists, and on the press to
write positive copy. Their role was to add status, and hence
value, to the new issues with which they were associated.
Jani Saarinen, VTT Technical
Research Centre of Finland
'Networks, cartels and
innovations in Finland 1945–84'
E-mail: jani.saarinen@vtt.fi
Networks have always
played – and still play – an important role in the industrial and
entrepreneurial life in Finland. Over the years, networks have been built up for
various purposes, usually in order to rationalise the activities of the firms.
However, over the years, a wide variety of new kinds of organisational
arrangements has been emerged to support innovation. It is not a big secret that
the industrial development in Finland before the mid 1980s was characterised by
large number of cartels. As cartels became less acceptable, later on even
forbidden by the law, other forms of networking increased its importance.
Innovative firms confront significant challenges in capturing value from new
technology. Success in research and development does not automatically translate
into a financial success, even if the technology developed meets a significant
market need. To succeed financially, innovative firms must quickly position
themselves advantageously in the appropriate complementary assets and
technologies. If they are not already integrated, the best solution often
involves bilateral and multilateral cooperative agreements.The objective of this
paper is to approach changes in collaboration of new product development
projects during the period 1945 - 84. In order to achieve the objective, data on
some 1600 Finnish innovations commercialised during the period 1945 - 84 is
used. The definition of an innovation used in this paper is based mainly on the
definitions provided in the OECD’s Oslo Manual. In addition to the changes in
collaboration, the paper explores the role of cartels, as one special form of
collaboration, in innovation activities of companies. As collaboration takes
place during the product research and development process, cartels play a
central role on the market side of the innovation process, after the
commercialisation of innovation. The paper argues that over the years, there has
been a switch in networking activities of the firms. As networks on the markets
(=cartels) have decreased, R&D type of networking have become more popular.
Stephen Salmon, Libraries
and Archives Canada
‘Lying … Partly Submerged’:
Corporate Governance and Insider Networks at Canada Steamship Lines, 1913-1926
E-mail: stephen.salmon@lac-bac.gc.ca
This
paper will analyse the management of Canada Steamship Lines (CSL) during its
formative first decade of operation. The company was the result of a series of
mergers among Canadian Great Lakes shipping firms between 1910 and 1913 that
created a semi-monopoly (100 ships of 200,000 tons) designed to control the
trade. I will demonstrate that CSL’s corporate governance structures were
primarily designed to profit the insider network who ran the company rather than
the firm itself. The development of CSL fits Boyce’s model of information
networks external to the firm (Gordon Boyce, Information,
Mediation and Institutional Development, 1995) with the exception that the
network was based on a widely held publicly traded company. This non-Chandlerian
paradigm worked well until the ambitions of key members of CSL’s insider
network clashed with the realities of the post-war depression.
Between
1916 and 1921 CSL made seven major acquisitions all of which were arranged
through the intermediation of members of its insider network. Two of these
transactions, the acquisition and restructuring of the Montreal Transportation
Company, and CSL’s purchase of ocean going tonnage will be presented as case
studies. A detailed study of these transactions will demonstrate that the
insider network’s financial abilities were primarily designed to benefit
themselves, the executives and directors of the firm, rather than all of the
shareholders of CSL. The insider network showed itself adept at many forms of
short term asset value enhancement. These included leveraged buyouts, stock
manipulation, and fraudulent evaluations.
All
of these manoeuvres were possible because CSL’s corporate governance
structures were designed to strengthen the position of the insider network
within the company at the expense of the average shareholders. CSL existed for
the network, not the network for CSL. For the members of the various
“syndicates” that formed around CSL the company was but an extension of
themselves. In this respect CSL could be considered a pre-modern firm. The
company only made the transition to modern capitalism under pressure from the
New York investment banker who financed its restructuring in 1922. These far
reaching reforms to CSL’s corporate governance structures reestablished the
company as the foremost Canadian shipping firm operating on the Great Lakes.
Werner
Scheltjens, University
of Groningen, Netherlands
'The Diverse Patterns of
Shipping and Trade: The Case of the Dutch Arkhangel’sk Trade in the First
Decades of the 18th Century'
E-mail:
W.F.Y.Scheltjens@rug.nl
In historiography, there is a tendency to analyse the foundation of
St. Petersburg in 1703 as the main symbol of the modernization of Russia.
Several years before the Peace Treaty of Nystadt was signed and the lands around
the Gulf of Finland were actually returned to Russia in 1721, Peter the Great
had already founded his so-called ‘window on Europe’. It is a known fact
that all levels of Russian society underwent profound changes during the first
decades of the 18th century, not in the least part as a result of Peter the
Great’s wish to europeanize Russia. These changes also had a large impact on
Russia’s direct foreign trade, which until the end of the 17th century was
conducted entirely through the White Sea port of Arkhangel’sk. Especially the
Dutch had a strong position in this direct foreign trade. In line with the
foundation of St. Petersburg, however, major efforts were made to re-direct
trade from Arkhangel’sk to St. Petersburg. Not only on the administrative
level were these efforts large in scale, the idea of turning St. Petersburg into
the ‘Venice of the North’ provoked major infrastructural changes, thus
creating the necessary prerequisites to re-address the hinterland of
Arkhangel’sk towards St. Petersburg. It goes without saying that the social,
political and ecnomic developments of the first decades of the 18th century had
a profound impact on all foreign shipping and trade with Russia. In this paper I
will focus on the meaning of the foundation of St. Petersburg for Dutch shipping
and trade with Arkhangel’sk in the first decades of the 18th century. In
concreto, I will analyse the diverse patterns of Dutch shipping and trade in
Arkhangel’sk and St. Petersburg, a subject that got my attention while
comparing various sources on both Dutch shipping and Dutch trade with Russia in
the beginning of the 18th century. The main sources of this paper are
unpublished archival materials, such as the so-called schipgeld
records and the galjootsgeldregisters,
which are both kept at the Municipal Archives of Amsterdam. As a theoretical
basis for my analysis I will turn to the analytical framework offered by
evolutionary economic geography and that for three reasons. First of all, there
is a remarkable resemblance between Sweden’s Derivationspolitik
of the late 17th century and Peter the Great’s efforts to re-direct foreign
trade from Arkhangel’sk to the Gulf of Finland in the first decades of the
18th century. This calls for attention to what is known as ‘St. Petersburg’s
pre-history’, and more specifically to the role of the 17th century Swedish
merchant town Nyen which was located on the same place as where St. Petersburg
would be founded in 1703. Can shipping and trade patterns in Nyen and
Arkhangel’sk and St. Petersburg and Arkhangel’sk be compared? What was the
position of Nyen within the trade area of the eastern part of the Gulf of
Finland? Does the foundation of St. Petersburg provoke a major change in this
situation, or is it rather a continuation of the pattern laid out by the Swedes?
Is the foundation of St. Petersburg to be understood rather as an evolutionary
than a revolutionary development? Secondly, while a movement of foreign
merchants from Arkhangel’sk to St. Petersburg can be traced, as a result of a
restrictive policy laid out by Peter the Great, the patterns of Dutch shipping
develop quite differently. In fact, shipping records clearly show a pattern
shift of Dutch shipping from Arkhangel’sk to Narva, not to St. Petersburg.
What is the reason for this development? Can strategies on the microlevel of the
actor (shipmaster) give us a lead? Do we have to divide trade networks from
shipping networks? And if so, does this have any consequences for the analytical
framework offered by evolutionary economic geography? Thirdly, the beginning of
the eighteenth century is known as an era of major investments in Dutch
shipbuilding. The shipyards in and around Amsterdam had a constant need for
wood. At the same time, the introduction of a new, Dutch type of sawmill was
seen in the area around the Gulf of Finland early in the 18th century. Is there
a link between the changing shipping patterns, the demand for wood and the
technological innovations in the area around the Gulf of Finland? While
trying to obtain some structural knowledge on early-modern shipping, this paper
will at the same time serve as a call towards economic geography as a scientific
discipline to incorporate in its analytical framework the rich environment of
what Philip E. Steinberg defines as “transportation space”.
Margrit Schulte Beerbühl,
Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf, Germany
'Licensed Smuggling during
the Napoleonic Wars by Immigrant Merchants'
E-mail: schulteb@phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de
About a hundred year ago the
well-known, German Historian Gustav Schmoller remarked that the history
of the eighteenth-century trade was actually a history of smuggling. This
statement applies especially to period of the Napoleonic wars, when a legal
trade with the continent was hardly possible. Since at least the early eighteenth
century Britain, however, had become heavily dependent on the import of
masts, timber, bar iron naval stores and other commodities which it needed
for the supply of the navy as well as the industrialisation. The Baltic
states including certain parts of Germany were the main suppliers of these
materials and the reliance on imports grew during the frequent wars of
the eighteenth century. Therefore Britain sought to sustain some sort of
trade with the continent and even France despite the reciprocal blockades
during the Napoelonic Wars. This clandestine maritime trade was organized
through a system of licences which provided the protection of the navy.
It allowed merchants to smuggle commodities in and out of the continental
countries. The London overseas merchants
of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century were a very cosmopolitan
group. Among them the German merchants constituted the largest immigrant
group and due to their geographical knowledge of the coastal areas of the
North Sea and the Baltic Sea as well as their family connections they helped
to organize an illicit trade with the continent. This paper will explore
the structure and scope of the commercial networks of the German immigrant
group with the blockaded continent during the Napoleonic Wars.
Peter Scott University of
Reading and James Walker, University of Reading, UK
'Sources of competitive
advantage in the interwar UK department store sector'
E-mail: p.m.scott@reading.ac.uk
Research
on sources of competitive advantage in UK retailing (and other sectors of the
British economy) during the early twentieth century has been severely impeded by
the lack of good quality statistical data concerning operating costs and
productivity for substantial populations of individual firms. This paper draws
on what was possibly the most detailed annual establishment-level survey of any
British industry prior to 1945. A major annual survey of department store
operating costs, conducted by Arnold Plant of the LSE for the Retail
Distributors Association, was initiated in 1931, comprising detailed operating
costs for over 100 stores during each of seven consecutive years. Contributing
stores were responsible for an aggregate annual turnover of over £50,000,000,
and employed about 45,000 people. The research draws on both the published
surveys, plus surviving individual returns, covering the years 1931 and 1934-6.
These provide 216 observations, each classified into over 80 fields –
including variables regarding each store’s workforce, region, class of trade,
and floorspace, together with detailed data on costs for administration,
occupancy, publicity, merchandising, and distribution (each sub-divided into
labour and other costs). This dataset, supplemented by evidence from department
store archives, provides a unique opportunity to examine factors influencing
productive efficiency and growth for a significant sector of UK retailing prior
to the Second World War. Particular questions addressed by the paper include:
the impact of investment in the `managerial revolution’ on efficiency; returns
to advertising expenditure; economies of sale and scope; and the influence of
regional and social class variables. Caroline
Shaw, The Rothschild Archive, UK
'Tracing
Networks in the Rothschild Archive'
E-mail: caroline.shaw@rothschild.co.uk
This
paper intends to trace some of the networks which operated for the highly
successful Rothschild banking businesses, and hopes simultaneously to highlight
some of the rich veins of original material in The Rothschild Archive for
business – and other – historians.
Key themes will be the importance of family and social networks, and
developing international networks. The paper will give a brief history of the
Rothschild businesses, from their beginnings in the Jewish ghetto in Frankfurt,
through their dominance of 19th century international financial
markets across the world, to the vicissitudes of the 20th century.
The paper will also give a brief description of the collections and
resources of The Rothschild Archive, itself no stranger to the effects of Nazi
looting and Cold War politics. The early development of the international
Rothschild business is an excellent example of a family network in action, and
can be traced through the early 19th century correspondence of the
five Rothschild brothers, based in Frankfurt, Vienna, London, Naples and Paris.
The first members of the family to leave the ghetto, they wrote to each
other incessantly: much of this correspondence is preserved at The Rothschild
Archive, and will shortly be made available online through one of the
Archive’s several ongoing projects. The importance of reliable information
networks became an entrenched feature of the Rothschilds’ way of doing
business.
The Archive contains a remarkable number of series of material from
trusted correspondents based in markets across the world, from Amsterdam to Rio
de Janeiro.
Their correspondence reveals not only prices of commodities and financial
instruments in these markets, but also political and broader economic
developments.
An ongoing project to make correspondence concerning Brazil available
online will give a cross-section of these international relationships – from
news of the declaration of Brazilian independence in 1822, to telegrams
announcing 20th century revolutions from an agent ‘embedded’ in
the highest circles of Brazilian affairs of state. One of the exciting synergies
created by the way the collections of the Archive have developed, encompassing
family as well as business records, is the possibility for researchers to
observe how social and business worlds mesh and mingle.
From sources as diverse as visitors books, family correspondence and
account ledgers, fresh light can be shed on many transactions.
The role of the Rothschild women, Rothschild art collections, Rothschild
gardens and Rothschild hospitality, in developing networks are all subjects
which can be traced in the Archive. Gareth Shaw, University
of Exeter and Andrew Alexander, University of Surrey, UK
'The Coming of the Supermarket:
the Processes and Consequences of Transplanting American ‘Know How’ into
Britain'
E-mail: G.Shaw@exeter.ac.uk
This
paper explores the transfer of self-service and supermarket techniques from
America into Britain during the period c1945-1975.
It focuses both on the processes of knowledge transfer and on the
consequences of the self-service innovation in British food retailing.
In terms of the former particular attention will be given to a discussion
on the types of knowledge and more especially a detailed analysis of the
importance of interlocking directorships in the process of knowledge transfer.
The consequences of supermarket development will be examined from both
retailer and consumer perspectives. The context of the paper is based around two
major research projects, namely the ‘Coming of the Supermarket’ (funded by
Leverhulme Trust) and on-going work focussing on consumer responses to
self-service methods (funded by AHRC).
The latter draws on recently undertaken oral histories and a national
consumer survey, which highlights reactions towards self-service along with
changing shopping strategies. The paper attempts to draw together both the
production and consumption aspects of the transfer of a major retail innovation. Gregory
Shealy, **
'Reaping Profits from Agricultural
Fairs and Congresses: An Alltagsgeschichte of the German Exhibitors of
American Harvester Companies'
E-mail: gpshealy@students.wisc.edu
Alex
Legge, one of the International Harvester Company’s German agents, reported to
the Chicago home office that “The ancient custom of holding regular market
days is still maintained in nearly all parts of Europe, consequently the public
are accustomed to transact business in this manner, and they take these
exhibitions, you might say, more seriously than do the American public.”
Fairs, expositions, and agricultural congresses served a primary role in
American harvester firms’ entrance into the European marketplace.
McCormick and Hussey first brought the machine to Europe through the 1851
London Exposition, and the companies continued to participate in them throughout
the long nineteenth century. These
fairs were the sites at which the American companies tried to demonstrate the
value of mechanically harvesting grain, and where the companies’ jobbers and
branch agents persuaded implement dealers to carry their line.
This paper focuses on the activities of the McCormick Harvesting Company
and the International Harvester Company during its expansion into Europe from
1885 until 1914. Most previous historical studies of these expositions focus on
the cultural presentations of race and nationality present in the exhibits,
while the few historians who do emphasize on the business aspects of these fairs
usually focus on the macro-strategy of the corporations rather than
reconstructing the individual experiences of the dealers, jobbers, and technical
experts who ran the fairs. This
paper fills this critical gap in the historiography by examining the ways in
which fairs served as a way to link European consumers and local implement
dealers to larger American manufacturers, and look at the daily tasks and jobs
of the individual exhibitors who took part in these shows.
It begins by briefly explaining how the American companies’ managers
understood the roles that trade fairs played in their overall corporate
strategies. The companies used
these fairs as spaces in which to advertise, meet European dealers, and work out
understandings on price with their competitors.
The paper’s main focus, however, will be on the individuals who worked
in these important spaces. The company accorded its exhibitors with the responsibility
of linking distant American multinationals to their network of European dealers
and customers. This study examines
those qualities the American companies looked for in the experts they would send
overseas; the daily activities of the exhibitors; how the companies designed
their pavilions; and demonstrates the extent to which these exhibitors utilized
a variety of ethically questionable methods (such as bribery) in their daily job
duties. To answer these questions,
this paper employs the methodology of such cultural historians as Alf Lüdtke
and David Blackbourn in recreating a ‘small piece’ of the larger story of
the expansion of transatlantic trading networks.
It examines the everyday life of these important individuals whom the
harvester companies tasked with adding European farmers and dealers to the
American multinationals.
Teresa da Silva Lopes, Queen
Mary, University of London, UK
'Brand Strategies in Multinational
Food and Drink'
E-mail: t.lopes@qmul.ac.uk
Despite
comparative decline in overall competitiveness in the twentieth century, it is
not well known that British firms remain highly competitive in global markets
for branded consumer goods. Why this is so remains unclear. This study assesses
historic British capabilities and institutional supports which helped firms in
consumer goods industries, in particular food and drink, to achieve success in
terms of global brand competition. The study provides a broad overview of the
strategies followed by leading British multinationals and their predecessors –
such as Cadbury Schweppes, Diageo, Unilever, and Rowntree - in the management of
their brands globally. It also compares these brand strategies with those
followed by their global competitors, leading multinationals from other
countries – such as Nestlé and Procter & Gamble. It also assesses the
role of institutions in that development, and in particular in helping firms
protect their trademarks internationally. Drawing on original archival research
and also secondary sources (such as newspapers, and company and brand
histories), this study aims to understand whether firms’ strategies that have
made some British consumer goods brands significant contributors to national
competitiveness are nation specific and still applicable in today’s global
business.
John Singleton, Victoria
University of Wellington, New Zealand
'The Direction of Central
Banks in the Twentieth Century: What, if anything, did central bankers
have in common'?
E-mail: John.Singleton@vuw.ac.nz
Central
banks play a vital role in the modern economy. Since the early twentieth
century, if not before, they have occupied a strategic position ‘between
governments and banks’. As bankers’ banks, they have offered secure
settlement (and sometimes payment) facilities to the commercial banking sector,
and at times of crisis have intervened as a lender of last resort. As government
banks, they have been monetary policy agencies, guardians of financial
stability, regulators, issuers of currency, and providers of various banking
services. Although there has been considerable variation in the range of
activities performed by individual central banks, it is evident that central
banking has been and remains a complex and diverse business. Highly diverse
businesses are notoriously hard to manage. Special characteristics served both
to exacerbate and to mitigate the challenges of managing central banks. On the
one hand, central banks have frequently lacked clear objectives. On the other
hand, they have been cushioned from competitive forces, and have been able to
rely on the loose budget constraint accompanying ready access to seigniorage
revenue. What sorts of people have managed the world’s central banks during
the last hundred years? This exploratory study focuses on how the attributes and
performance of central bankers have been perceived by scholars (and other
informed observers), as well as on how central bankers have tried to explain and
justify themselves. Some patterns do emerge: central bankers have tended to
become more open and less secretive; they have also become more reflective and
sophisticated in their economic reasoning. Is there a typical central banker?
Since Rogoff introduced the term in the mid-1980s, the ‘conservative central
banker’ has often been regarded as an ideal. If non-specialists think of
central bankers at all, they probably do regard them as ‘conservative’ in a
general sense. Yet Rogoff and many economists in the 1970s and early 1980s were
inclined to see them as the compliant tools of opportunistic governments and/or
as craven seekers of short-term popularity. In other words, central bankers
appear not to be all alike, and the assessment of their performance depends to a
large extent on the perspective of the observer.
Central
bankers have been portrayed in different contexts as radical and conservative,
compliant and rebellious. They have been praised as gurus or devoted public
servants, and condemned as villains or rent-seeking bureaucrats. They must have
been a varied bunch if these impressions are to be believed. Diverse they
certainly were, but central bankers of all sorts increasingly saw themselves as
members of an international community of specialists, a vision which became
stronger as the century progressed.
Sally Sokoloff, University
of Northampton, UK
‘How Many Germans Equal
a Pig?’ World War One and Retail Food Businesses in Northamptonshire'
E-mail: Sally.Sokoloff@northampton.Ac.Uk
This paper considers the impact
of the first British ‘Total War’ on retail businesses through a study of
one county. It focuses on retail butcher and baker businesses in
towns and villages in Northamptonshire and on their male employees.
Male bakers and butchers and their workers were subject to conscription
into the armed services from 1916-1918, if they had not volunteered to
fight already. Encroaching state controls over the farming and the
processing sector, and patriotic public campaigns about food consumption,
also affected their businesses and markets during the war. Taking Northamptonshire as
a case study, the main source for the study is the appeal papers that men
submitted to the Military Service Tribunals to ask for exemption from conscription.
Bakers and butchers provided detailed evidence of the functioning of their
businesses and a rationale for their survival, as well as putting the case
for them being personally ‘spared’ military service, to the Tribunals and
there is much discussion of the fate of businesses and shops. Local
communities also had the chance to present their view of retail outlets
to the Tribunals that had the difficult task of reconciling local needs
and personal cases with the direction of men into the Army. Gendered
viewpoints about who should and could do the work of a butcher or a baker
run through these discussions. Debate about particular cases within
communities, in the Tribunal hearings, and in the local press, reveal the
growing importance of people’s assent to this gruelling war being conditional
on the authorities’ consideration of their daily needs on the Home Front,
down to the local supply of meat and bread. The study will conclude by
considering the results of the war on this part of the retail sector.
Were butchers and bakers in Northamptonshire successful in securing the
continuity of their occupations and businesses? Or did the First
World War accelerate the trend towards large meat suppliers working through
branch shops and the rationalisation of bakeries?
Jon Stobart, University
of Northampton, UK
'In and out of fashion?
Advertising novel and second-hand goods in Georgian England'
E-mail: Jon.Stobart@northampton.Ac.Uk
Historians of consumption have
placed great emphasis on the growing importance of fashion as a stimulus
to demand in eighteenth-century England. For McKendrick (1982), the ‘hypnotic
effects of fashion’ were central to processes of social emulation and class
competition: it was part of conspicuous consumption, designed to underline
wealth and augment social standing. In doing so, fashion built on notions
of taste and distinction – not, perhaps the ‘difficult’ consumption that
we associate with Bourdieu’s (1984) theorisation, but a means of codifying
goods as elite, rare and discriminating. Indeed, Simmel (1971) defines
fashion precisely in these terms: the coding of objects in order the claim
membership of particular (elite) groups. This coding, according to Berg
(2005), built on notions of taste and the sensuality of goods; on the idea
of novelty and newness, and on the ability to imitate and assimilate new
goods into established genres. Yet the idea of fashion –
with its connotations of tasteful, new, ‘networked’ goods – brought with
it the corollary that other goods would be out of fashion. These are often
seen as occupying a distinct circuit of exchange – the second-hand market
– which gave poorer sections of society the opportunity to engage in ‘fashionable’
consumption and to own goods which were, more or less, fashionable (see
Lemire, 1991). This lower tier was linked to the consumption of fashionable
new goods through common cultural values (not least the importance of fashion)
and through the flow of goods from the upper to the lower tier. But it
was differentiated by financial barriers, social distinctions and geography. These divisions can be too
easily overplayed: they were often linked together through the activities
of buyers and sellers, both of which groups could be intimately engaged
in both first-hand and second-hand circuits of exchange (Stobart, 2006).
In this paper, I want to explore the ways in which they were linked together
through the practices and ‘virtual’ spaces of newspaper advertisements.
Both the London and provincial press carried a growing number of advertisements
in the eighteenth century, many of them placed by shopkeepers. These drew
on and promoted the idea of fashion as a key selling point, both for goods
and for the shopkeepers themselves. Indeed, the construction of the shopkeeper
as a conduit or even arbiter of taste and fashion is a key aspect of these
advertisements. In both respects, connections with London were often portrayed
as central in defining fashionability. At the same time, newspapers also
carried advertisements for second-hand goods, so that new and used: in
and out-of fashion were juxta-posed on the page of the broadsheet. Moreover,
the two could be linked together in the same advertisement as tradesmen
and women advertised both new and used goods for sale at their shops. This
served to blur the distinction between new and old; novel and established;
fashionable and unfashionable. It also questions the established motivations
for buying second-hand goods (usually seen in economic terms) and the centrality
of fashion to eighteenth-century consumption.
Mika Suonpää,
University of Hull, UK
'British enterprise in
Southeast Europe and attitudes to Balkan Slavs as business partners, 1878-1914'
E-mail: M.Suonpaa@hull.ac.uk
My
paper examines reasons for comparative lack of British trade and investment in
the Balkans (primarily in Serbia and Bulgaria), and investigates British
reactions to difficulties in commercial contacts in the region, ultimately
considering how the “commercial aptitude” of Serbs and Bulgarians was
regarded by British diplomats, merchants, and investors. British views were
shaped by three mercantile activities: proposals to establish banks and
commercial agencies, participation in competitions for government contracts and
concessions, and conducting of day-to-day trade. The existence of vast
unexploited natural wealth, increased post-1880 demand for manufactured goods,
relative geographical closeness after improvements in the transport network, and
economic growth in the host countries increased British commercial interest
towards the Balkans. Methodologically, the discussion is situated within the
framework of cultural otherness, viewed in the context of commercial encounters.
The paper is divided into three parts. First, the lack of British investment is
examined in the context of foreign capital flows to the Balkans: how far was the
absence of British investment explainable by the “image” of the Balkan Slavs
in terms of commercial morality and trustworthiness? Second, the extent to which
British unwillingness to invest impeded British firms’ ability to obtain
lucrative concessions is considered. Finally, the ways in which the encounters
of British merchants with local customs authorities shaped British views about
Balkans Slavs as trading partners is investigated? British investors and
diplomats believed that in commercial matters the Balkan Slavs were dishonest,
unreasonable, incompetent and xenophobic. British firms rarely wanted to involve
Balkan businessmen in their ventures, and, even though the importance of having
local agents and contacts with local banks was acknowledged, they were often
regarded by British firms as fraudulent and unreliable. Furthermore, the
perceived anti-foreignism – often regarded as a major part of the “national
character” in the Balkans – was seen as the key factor diminishing the value
of the Balkans as an attractive area for investment. Consequently, the lack of
British interest in providing Balkan governments with state loans resulted in
the inability of British firms to acquire concessions and government contracts
which had a negative effect on British trade. British merchants often complained
about the “unfair” treatment they had received in the hands of Balkan
customs authorities. This was especially the case from the 1880s onwards when
former Turkish trade agreements were abolished, and the Balkan governments were
able to use restrictive measures to protect home industries. Sudden duty
increases and unexplained fines inflicted on British exporters were regarded by
them as “arbitrary measures”, specifically directed against British
merchants, which, it was believed, seriously damaged British trading interests
in the region, and contributed to the impression of unreasonableness,
untrustworthiness and anti-foreignism of the Balkan Slavs. Thus, in addition to
economic and financial factors, negative attitudes and political risks
importantly contributed to the lack of British commerce in the Balkans, and
strengthened already powerful stereotypically disapproving perceptions. In terms
of sources, my paper is at present based primarily on British firms’
complaints to Foreign Office and on British diplomats’ commercial
correspondence with London. I have used some material of the London committee of
the Ottoman Bank, and I will in future add more material from companies such as
Vickers Sons & Maxim, Sun Insurance, Lever Brothers, etc., who all had
business contacts in the Balkans.
Stuart Sweeney, Oxford
University, UK
'Military Railways in India 1875-1914: Globalization and Guns'
E-mail: lynne@gagliano.fsnet.co.uk
Indian railways represented
by far the largest single item of British foreign direct investment during
the period of empire. Some £200 million was invested by an amalgam
of state, private, and government guaranteed companies up to the outbreak
of the First World War. Private rail promoters and financiers had the advantage
of being able to point to commercial, famine protection, and military rationales
for this investment programme. The British government often failed to scrutinise
the business propositions closely. They assumed that the benefits overall
would justify the outlay of Indian taxpayers money. WJ Macpherson, who
looked at an earlier period of Indian rail investment, viewed the military/strategic
rationale, after the Indian Mutiny, and in the face of mounting Anglo Russian
tension, as the main driving force behind government support. In the period
after 1875 these tensions mounted, and a new generation of government guaranteed
Indian rail companies, based in London, were able to press the links between
trade and peace. In Upper Burma the lands annexed in 1885 would be connected
with Indian ports for trade and commerce via a number of railways companies,
so strengthening the defence against French and Russian forces in South
East Asia. The Bengal North Western and Burma Railways were financed through
Rothschild’s in London on the basis that they facilitated troop movements
to military fronts and encouraged trade. Government facilitated improved
revenues for all these companies, in a covert manner, which maintained
their financial integrity while allowing them to maintain the public persona
of ‘laissez faire’ capitalism. In the process, government guarantees and
funding were kept off the fiscal deficit of the Indian and British Governments,
not unlike modern approaches to dealing with Eurostat and EU/Maastricht
guidelines. The
railways encouraged rapid exports of primary product from internal areas
to ports, to be traded for British manufactures, so helping to facilitate
the first period of ‘globalization’. Meanwhile the Great Game could be
fought with adequate troop mobility, and the Afghan people could observe
the superior investment and technology provided by the British, and forge
trading links with Calcutta and London. However, behind these
large commitments lay the Indian taxpayer as ‘lender of last resort’. Writers
like Nairoji, Dutt and Wacha began to point to the extravagance of military
railways, and the lack of investment elsewhere, in manufacturing, education,
and irrigation. Railways elsewhere promoted growth through the standard
accelerator and multiplier effects, but in India the ‘Buy British’ approach
negated these benefits. This model of ‘secure globalization’, pursued by
the British through the railways, met the impediment of Indian poverty.
This could no longer be ignored as catastrophic famines occurred and the
Russian strategic menace appeared to wane after their disastrous defeat
to Japan.
Steven Toms, University
of York and David Higgins, University of York
'The Determinants of Competitive
Advantage: British Evidence on Corporate Success, 1945-1984'
E-mail: st27@york.ac.uk
There
has been considerable debate on the performance of the British economy since
1945. The majority of studies have concentrated on macroeconomic performance
and/or the competitiveness of the manufacturing sector.
Fewer have examined the financial performance of individual firms’ or
of the corporate economy as a whole.
This study takes a sample of c.3000 firms in 19 industries and identifies
Britain’s best performing companies, in terms of ROCE,
over the period 1950-85. The results question the reliance on traditional
typologies of business success, especially
given the onset of deindustrialisation from the 1970s.
Our findings also contribute to Resource Based Perspectives of the firm
because particular emphasis is devoted to understanding why some of the
best-performing companies in our sample were located in ‘under-performing’
industries. This latter finding simultaneously undermines the importance of
structural determinants of industrial performance and shifts the emphasis firmly
towards an understanding of why some firms in the British economy have been
consistently more succesfful than others. A broader research agenda for British
business history is thereby suggested.
Lídia Torra, Universitat
Pompeu Fabra, Spain
'Credit networks and informal
links among merchants, textile retailers and peddlers in Catalonia (17th-
19th centuries)'
E-mail: lidia.torra@upf.edu
The
paper focuses on the development of credit by merchants and Textile retailers in
Barcelona from a sample of post-mortem inventories
covering the period 1650-1810. Attention is paid to aspects of this development,
in particular the setting up of credit networks encompassing Barcelona’s
merchants and other dealers located in small
and medium size Catalonia towns,
and in other cities in the rest of Spain. These credit networks promoted the
integration of the Catalan market and increased the consumption of Textile goods
among large sections of the population.
Aashish Velkar, London
School of Economics, UK
'Competition, Coordination
and Standardization: Emergence of the British Standard Wire Gauge c1883'
E-mail: A.Velkar@lse.ac.uk
Interchangeable manufacturing
depends on ‘making things the same’ – i.e. using standardized parts. British
manufacturers adopted interchangeable manufacturing techniques gradually
in the late nineteenth century, somewhat later than their American counterparts.
Although, historians have proposed various reasons for this relatively
late adoption, one aspect that has not been investigated is the impact
of foreign trade on standardization of British manufacturers. Recent research
on standardization as a competitive strategy argues that a ‘standards battle’
triggers more intense price competition, whereas firms follow less aggressive
strategies if they compete within a single standard . However, standardization
or standard-switching involves overcoming excess inertia and other coordination
issues and industries can get locked into ‘wrong’ standards due to
technical interrelatedness . Victorian markets were not an arena for neutral
exchanges and the state was involved in many aspects, including the standardization
of British manufacturers. Thus, the boundaries of state involvement and
the influence of competition on standardization of interchangeable parts
raises some interesting issues on whether interchangeability was the result
of de jure or de facto standardization. I have explored these issues
using a historical case of the standardization of the wire gauge in late
nineteenth century Britain. Uniformity in wire sizes - used in telegraph
and electric cables, pin and needle making, fencing wire, spectacles and
watch springs, and a variety of other uses - depended upon the use of standardized
wire gauges. In 1879, around 55 distinct wire gauges were identified of
which 45 were used in Britain alone. Early attempts to standardize the
gauges between the 1840s and 1870s remained unsuccessful. The large buyers
of wire and the telegraph engineers proposed standards in the 1870s, which
were not adopted by the wire making firms. In the 1880s, facing stiff competition
from German makers of wire products, using a standard wire gauge, the British
wire makers decided to coordinate efforts to establish a standard gauge.
However, the various industry groups could not agree on a common standard.
This issue was then taken to the Board of Trade, who acted as an arbitrator
between the groups and a standard wire gauge emerged in 1883. These events raise several
questions. For instance, why did the buyers begin to demand standard wire
sizes in the 1880s? Why did the wire makers begin to coordinate efforts
to establish a standard gauge in the 1880s, but showed no interest in the
standardization attempts made during the 1840s, 1850s and 1860s? What can
explain the failure between the various groups to agree on a common standard?
What role did technology and competition play in determining the standard
that eventually emerged? To what degree was the intervention by the government
in setting a de jure standard an efficient outcome? These are the various
issues that I explore in the paper. The explanation for these
events is not straightforward. I argue that standardization of parts was
a strategic response to reduce monitoring costs where such parts were exchanged
through market transactions. Further, the trade, when faced with increasing
competition, preferred to operate within standardized product markets and
standardized parts acted as commitment mechanisms to prevent reneging firms
in engaging in (covert) price competition. Finally, coordinating the actions
of diverse groups is achieved not only through non-cooperative, neutral,
market-mediated exchanges, but often involves a negotiated settlement involving
trade associations. Where negotiations are not successful, setting a de
jure standard by an arbitrator could be an effective means of solving coordination
failures.
Maggie Walsh, University
of Nottingham, UK
'From Ironbridge to Teddy
Bear and Friends: Aspects of the Twentieth Century British Soft Toy Industry'
E-mail: Margaret.Walsh@nottingham.ac.uk
In one of the birthplaces of
the Industrial Revolution the manufacture of soft toys became one of the
light industries which prospered and then adapted to survive. At Ironbridge
Merrythought became a leading soft toy company, with for a while the doll
firm of Norah Welling and later Golden Bear nearby. In similar circumstances
Deans, formerly of Harborne, Birmingham, relocated to Wrexham and also
adjusted to changed manufacturing and marketing conditions.
The British soft toy
firms could compete in design and could produce quality products for niche
markets, but by the 1980s and 1990s could no longer produce popular items
in the face of cheap mass products manufactured in the Pacific Rim. While
such firms had never relied on mass sales at the cheap end of the market,
globalisation forced these firms to rely on their names, their designers
and collectors of experience, highly crafted items, often sold on the basis
of relatively small limited production runs. For this the toy industry
was assisted by the development of specialist magazines, special offers
to those in companies’ members’ clubs and highly attractive new designs
or replicas of old or famous toys.
David Williams, University
of Leicester and John Armstrong, Thames Valley University, UK
'A New and Modern Business:
Steam Shipping, 1812-1840'
E-mail: dmw@le.ac.uk
and john.armstrong@tvu.ac.uk
This
paper is about the introduction, early progress and impact of the steamship up
to 1840. Given this, the title’s opening phrase “A new and modern
business” might appear as gloss, however, its wording had been deliberately
chosen to emphasise what we regard as very special characteristics of the early
steamship. In the past there has been a tendency to view the early
steamship as merely taking over some of the functions of sailing vessels.
There is an element of truth in this but far more significant is that the
steamship created new business in the form of passenger trade and recreational
travel and that its operation required a new set of economic considerations and
management skills. The costs of steam shipping, capital and running, were new
and different. Likewise the
operation of liner services, the need to take account of depreciation and coming
to terms with competition between costly enterprises all necessitated the
acquisition of new management techniques. In
these respects the steamship was new and modern and preceded - by some twenty
years - the railway which has been traditionally held up as the originator of
new business practices and the harbinger of modernity in such matters as
attitudes to time, distance, the discipline of regularity and technology.
John F. Wilson, University
of Central Lancashire and Andrew Thomson, Open University, UK
'A Framework for Analyzing
the Development of Management: a Comparative Perspective Using Key Drivers,
c 1950'
E-mail: jfwilson@uclan.ac.uk
This paper identifies a
comprehensive range of ‘drivers’ which have influenced the development of
managerial capitalism, and uses these to create a matrix in which Britain can be
compared with its main competitors at a particular point in time, in this case
1950. 31 ‘drivers’ are categorized into three groupings, namely
market-cum-technological, institutional/cultural, and business policy and
practice, and the situation in 1950 for each country, namely Britain, the United
States, Germany, and Japan is briefly described, along with a description of the
way in which the driver impacts on the development of management. The outcome of
these comparisons is a clear difference between the British case and the other
three countries. A second comparative method of reflecting on the drivers,
through use of force-field diagrams, is also referred to. Finally, the paper
muses on whether these means of analyzing the past can also be used to consider
the future.
|
The
Royal Historical Society