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Global Perspectives and British Paradoxes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

Geoffrey Jones
Geoffrey Jones
Affiliation:
Geoffrey Jones is professor of business history in the economics department of theUniversity of Reading, U.K.
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Extract

For Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., in Scale and Scope, “the British story provides a counterpoint, an antitheses, to the American experience.” Chandler shows that fewer of the largest firms appeared in Britain. British companies preferred to retain family or family-like control and management; he terms this “personal capitalism.” Firms were reluctant to recruit professional managers, and if they did so, they did not like them to have received much formal education. There were no business schools in the pre-1945 U.K. These personal capitalists on the whole preferred personal income to making the 3-pronged investments in manufacturing, marketing and management in the capitalintensive industries of the Second Industrial Revolution. The more complex the technical and managerial skills required in an industry, the worse these personal capitalists performed and the greater the missed opportunities. For Chandler, Britain stands as a warning of the unpleasant consequences of not adopting managerial capitalism.

Type
Essays
Information
Business History Review , Volume 71 , Issue 2 , Summer 1997 , pp. 291 - 298
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1997

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