From Family Firms to Corporate Capitalism: Essays in Business and Industrial History in Honour of Peter Mathias

by Kristine Bruland, Patrick O'Brien

Overview

What explains the growth of a business, and more broadly the development or decline of a whole economy? What role does a particular entrepreneur or indeed a culture of entrepreneurship play? Does the evidence suggest that a particular structure or organizational form was or should be adopted to ensure best practice and commercial success? These fundamental questions have long preoccupied business and economic historians. With the current expansion of business and management education and training, the investigations and findings of the historian may have wider significance and relevance.

This volume has been stimulated by the work of Peter Mathias, one of the leading figures in this field in the post-war period. Here a number of his former students—many now internationally distinguished historians—pay tribute in a book that explores the move from family firms to corporate capitalism. The contributors argue that sustained growth has never been a matter of a few spectacular technical breakthroughs, but instead rests on subtle economic and social transformations—in cultures, in economic organizations, and in the roles of science and technology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198290469
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/23/1998
Pages:	388
Product dimensions:	9.21(w) x 6.14(h) x 0.88(d)
Lexile:	1660L (what's this?)

About the Author

University of Oslo

University of London

Table of Contents

Introduction, Kristine BrulandPart I. Industry and Business in the Age of the Industrial Revolution1. Inventors of the World of Goods, Maxine Berg2. Firm, Family, and Community: Managerial and Household Strategies in the Staffordshire Pottery in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, Marguerite Dupree3. Risk, Capital, and Credit on Tyneside, circa 1690-1780, Joyce Ellis4. Petty Pawns and Informal Lending: Gender and the Transformation of Small-Scale Credit in England, circa 1600-1800, Beverly Lemire5. Sugar Refining in Bristol, Kenneth Morgan6. ‘The Irremediable Evil': British Copper Smelters' Collusion and the Cornish Mining Industry, 1725-1865, Edmund Newell7. Fuelling the Local Economy: the Fenland Coal Trade, 1760-1850, Fiona WoodPart II. The Era of Corporate Capitalism8. The Babcock & Wilson Company: Strategic Alliance, Technology Development, and Enterprise Control, circa 1860-1900, Kristine Bruland9. Joseph Gillot and his Family Firm: the Many Faces of Entrepreneurship, David Cannadine10. Incomes Policies in Britain since 1940: A Study in Political Economy, Brian Harrison11. The Lancashire Cotton Industry, and its Rivals, Heita Kawakatsu12. The American Automobile Frenzy of the 1950s, Avner Offer

Editorial Reviews

"...this is a far more integrated and useful example than most and does justice as well as honor to the renowned apprentice-master."—Albion

From the Publisher