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Despite the wealth of primary materials available and the insights which business historians can make to our understanding of corporate governance, applied work on the operation of internal and external mechanisms of corporate governance is sorely missing in the literature. This article attempts to address that omission. Theoretical insights on ownership behaviour are used to assess how owners behave in practice using previously un-utilised source materials relating to the crisis at Rolls Royce. We find standard theoretical approaches to ownership behaviour to be sorely lacking. We find, instead, that the key players were the merchant banks. We also find perceptions of government policy to be an important explanatory factor behind the behaviour of owners and managers, and, as such, suggest that this event in business history is important not only in its own right but in determining future corporate governance in this country. A recurrent theme in the economic history of the UK is that of the under-performing firm. The issue is not any scarcity of evidence, be it relative productivity levels and growth rates, market shares at home and abroad or profitability. The literature abounds with such evidence. The problem is how the fortunes of such firms are turned round. Two aspects apply. The first is that of responsibility; who, and in what sense, is ultimately responsible for correcting under-performance? The orthodox model of the owner-managed firm would place that responsibility on the individual as both owner and manager. The growth of the publicly quoted firm, however, has led to a separation of ownership from management and, with it, problems on the nature of responsibility. (1) The second is that, despite the growing literature and contemporary debate on best practice, (2) the application of the analysis of systems of regulation and control to the problems of firm performance has not figured in economic and financial history, de spite the wealth of primary source material available. As a result, the contemporary debate has not been informed by the insights which recent economic and financial history might offer. This article makes a contribution to assessing corporate governance in the recent past. Previously under-exploited primary source materials are used to assess the internal and external mechanisms of governance. The article is based on a case study of governance at ROLLS ROYCE. Section II assesses theoretical approaches which predict ownership behaviour. The performance of Rolls Royce is analysed in section III. Section IV assesses shareholder behaviour to test the validity of each of the theoretical propositions, finds value in each but questions whether, for a company in crisis, they have real relevance. This section moves away from standard approaches of shareholder behaviour which rely on market price data. Market price data reflect the sum total of all transactions; they cannot and do not allow us to identify the transacting parties and their individual behaviour. In order to identify how specific institutions behaved, we assess individual transactions behaviour. We have used previously under-exploited pr imary source materials: the company's share registers which contain, on an annual basis, a record of the holdings and transactions of each named shareholder in the company. From this we identify how named shareholders behaved. Sections V to VII access a previously unused official report on events at the company. The report was not written as a study of corporate governance; it was a detailed exposition of events. From the wealth of evidence contained in the report, however, we can discern how corporate governance was interpreted and exercised. The information provides a unique insight into how ownership responsibility was carried out (and by whom) at a time of crisis. Section V considers how corporate governance operated in practice at the company through an examination of the company's systems of accounting, regulation and control. The exercise of responsibility in a crisis situation is examined in section VI, which highlights the part played by the banking institutions, and section VII, which considers how government policy influenced the behaviour of all the parties and suggests that responsibility may be traced to the legal ramifications of fiscal liability for trading under conditions of insolvency. Section VIII draws conclusi ons and considers the implications for the long run evolution of corporate governance in the UK., II There are many views of 'City'--industry relations which predict behaviour in the event of company under-performance. For exposition purposes, we use a four-way classification scheme, whilst recognising that there [...]

The diffusion of ownership of consumer durables through society, of which the car is one example, is often described in the following terms. In the first stage production levels are […]

SUE BOWDEN and MICHAEL COLLINS. The Bank of England, industrial regeneration, and hire purchase between the wars. The article uses new material to analyse the nature of the Bank of England's financial and managerial involvement with one of the UK's leading finance houses (UDT) during the interwar period. It is shown that the Bank's involvement was perceived as part of its more general strategy for revitalizing the British economy. However, research reveals serious ambiguity in Bank of England motivation. In particular, there was a strong defensive element, as Montagu Norman sought to counter the threat of political intervention in financial markets. He was also anxious not to upset existing institutional arrangements in the markets. In the event, the extraordinary support given to the nascent hire-purchase market did not succeed in stimulating much business in the chosen area of small-scale industrial investment.

In the great themes of economics and society -- the pace of economic growth over centuries, the evolution and impact of national cultures, the advance of technology -- the individual [...]

The article examines economic methods by which the economy of the home and the use of home appliances can be discussed. Topics include the economic understandings of historical time, durables, changing environments, profit motivation, and systems of supply.

Two major debates in the literature, productivity performance and the decline of the cotton industry, are joined in the analysis presented in this article on the attempts to raise productivity through the introduction of the more looms per weaver system in cotton weaving in the inter-war years. We find that the limited resultant changes were the outcome of understandable predisposition to maintain co-operative behaviour which meant that productivity enhancing schemes with long term potential were sacrificed for more modest schemes which preserved consensus in the short term., A literature search of business and economic history journals for the last two decades would identify several key preoccupations amongst our profession. An unbiased observer could be forgiven for believing [...]

Women and the Economic Miracle is an ambitious book which seeks to chart and explain the position of women in the Japanese economy in the twentieth century. Brinton's analysis embraces [...]

What is marketing, how important is it and how does it relate to changes in production and society over time, place and product? These are questions which The Rise and [...]

In the twentieth century Americans have demonstrated a growing and, to some observers, alarming taste for immediate private consumption. The satisfaction of these desires, in the form of mass ownership [...]

The editors of this book are to be congratulated for their courage and success in bringing together a volume which explores the historical importance of women's work over several centuries [...]

Understanding the Gender Gap marks a milestone in women's history. This is a piece of outstanding scholarship based on exhaustive primary research and a high level of economic reasoning which [...]

As exogenous shocks impact on industry we believe it timely to revisit the experience of two ‘staple’ industries during the interwar period: cotton and wool textiles. Using a variety of under- explored primary source materials we argue that the ability to withstand the shocks of the interwar years was largely dependent on prior investment decisions. In cotton textiles the re floatation boom precluded strategic flexibility and encouraged collusion. The absence of such behaviour in wool textiles fostered competition and the pursuit of a successful marketing policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines morbidity and mortality patterns in interwar England and Wales, using previously under-explored primary archival source materials. These materials help us understand not only what local authorities could and did do, but also the reasons for the marked variations in the ability of different authorities to manage the problem. We identify where and why there were problems and also how and why some authorities were more successful than others in dealing with the disease. Wealth was not an issue. We find a combination of pro-active preventative measures was significant. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This section presents a review of periodical literature on economic history in 2002. A plausible alternative to any straightforward equation between cultural change and population movement clearly lies in attention to the construction of identity, but many problems remain in applying such approaches to the available archaeological record. Economic factors receive particular emphasis in two studies of aristocratic culture in late Anglo-Saxon England. These processes are in turn attributed to increased agricultural productivity and entrepreneurship, and increased extraction of dues and renders in the form of coin. All these changes are held to have induced a series of transformations in the political culture of the mid-eleventh century, characterized by the deployment of wealth and cash in political intervention. The economy of Britain in the twelfth century is relatively neglected by historians. The development of nucleated villages has been a key theme of work on settlement. Dispersed settlement could be encouraged by the asserting associated with the population growth of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries although population was in decline in this region even before the Black Death.

The article presents a case study that considered the impact of the more loom per weaver system to increase productivity in the cotton industry during the inter-war years in Great Britain. A literature search of business and economic history journals for the last two decades would identify several key preoccupations amongst people in sociology profession. An unbiased observer could be forgiven for believing that cotton textiles was the key area of interest at an industry level and that productivity was the key thematic issue. The results reported in this paper are based on research into the records of contemporary employers as represented by the Cotton Spinners' and Manufacturers' Association and trade unions as represented by the Amalgamated Weavers Association at the district and local level. The article also explores the outcome of the attempt to improve productivity and suggests the limited changes were a reflection of an understandable, if costly, predisposition to sacrifice productivity-enhancing schemes with long term potential, for more modest schemes which preserved consensus and solidarity in the short term.