IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/bushst/v53y2011i4p505-529.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Organisational flexibility and governance in a civil-law regime: Scottish partnership banks during the Industrial Revolution

Author

Listed:
  • Graeme Acheson
  • Charles Hickson
  • John Turner

Abstract

Unlike their English counterparts, Scottish partnership banks during the Industrial Revolution operated under partnership law which was similar to the French societe en commandite. The article suggests that the definitive feature of this partnership law was that it permitted partnerships to separate ownership from control and stock to be traded. Archival evidence also suggests that Scottish partnership banks had mechanisms to ameliorate potential insider opportunism arising from the separation of ownership from control. The available evidence also suggests that the ability of Scottish banks to separate ownership from control may have contributed to the relative stability of the banking system.

Suggested Citation

  • Graeme Acheson & Charles Hickson & John Turner, 2011. "Organisational flexibility and governance in a civil-law regime: Scottish partnership banks during the Industrial Revolution," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(4), pages 505-529.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:bushst:v:53:y:2011:i:4:p:505-529
    DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2011.574690
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00076791.2011.574690
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00076791.2011.574690?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Musacchio,Aldo, 2015. "Experiments in Financial Democracy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107514782.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Turner, John D., 2017. "The development of English company law before 1900," QUCEH Working Paper Series 2017-01, Queen's University Belfast, Queen's University Centre for Economic History.
    2. Turner, John D., 2024. "Three centuries of corporate governance in the UK," QUCEH Working Paper Series 24-01, Queen's University Belfast, Queen's University Centre for Economic History.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Eric Hilt, 2014. "History of American Corporate Governance: Law, Institutions, and Politics," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 1-21, December.
    2. Luis Alfonso Dau & Aya S. Chacar & Marjorie A. Lyles & Jiatao Li, 2022. "Informal institutions and international business: Toward an integrative research agenda," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 53(6), pages 985-1010, August.
    3. Peter L. Rousseau & Paul Wachtel, 2015. "Episodes of Financial Deepening: Credit Booms or Growth Generators?," Working Papers 15-09, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
    4. Cortes, Gustavo S. & Marcondes, Renato L. & Diaz, Maria Dolores M., 2014. "Mortgages for machinery: credit and industrial investment in pre-World War I Brazil," Financial History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(2), pages 191-212, August.
    5. Acheson, Graeme G. & Campbell, Gareth & Turner, John D., 2016. "Common law and the origin of shareholder protection," QUCEH Working Paper Series 2016-04, Queen's University Belfast, Queen's University Centre for Economic History.
    6. Howard Bodenhorn, 2014. "Voting Rights, Shareholdings, and Leverage at Nineteenth-Century U.S. Banks," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 57(2), pages 431-458.
    7. Lucas Boareto da Aparecida & Sergio Giovanetti Lazzarini & Adriana Bruscato Bortoluzzo, 2022. "Long-term Financing: Exploring the Recent Advances in the Brazilian Bond Market," RAC - Revista de Administração Contemporânea (Journal of Contemporary Administration), ANPAD - Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Administração, vol. 26(2), pages 210076-2100.
    8. Bogart, Dan, 2022. "Infrastructure and institutions: Lessons from history," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    9. B. Zorina Khan, 2017. "Related Investing: Corporate Ownership and Capital Mobilization during Early Industrialization," NBER Working Papers 23052, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Graeme G. Acheson & Gareth Campbell & John D. Turner & Nadia Vanteeva, 2015. "Corporate ownership and control in Victorian Britain," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 68(3), pages 911-936, August.
    11. Martínez André & Viarengo Martina & Musacchio Aldo, 2010. "The Great Leap Forward: The Political Economy of Education in Brazil, 1889-1930," Working Papers 2010-18, Banco de México.
    12. Lazzarini, Sergio G. & Musacchio, Aldo & Bandeira-de-Mello, Rodrigo & Marcon, Rosilene, 2015. "What Do State-Owned Development Banks Do? Evidence from BNDES, 2002–09," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 237-253.
    13. Stephen Haber, 2008. "Differential Paths of Financial Development: Evidence from New World Economies," NBER Chapters, in: Understanding Long-Run Economic Growth: Geography, Institutions, and the Knowledge Economy, pages 89-120, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Ruth V. Aguilera & Birgitte Grøgaard, 2019. "The dubious role of institutions in international business: A road forward," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 50(1), pages 20-35, February.
    15. Eric Hilt & Jacqueline Valentine, 2011. "Democratic Dividends: Stockholding, Wealth and Politics in New York, 1791-1826," NBER Working Papers 17147, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Howard Bodenhorn, 2013. "Large Block Shareholders, Institutional Investors, Boards of Directors and Bank Value in the Nineteenth Century," NBER Working Papers 18955, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Andrea Goldstein, 2013. "The Political Economy of Global Business: the Case of the BRICs," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 4(2), pages 162-172, May.
    18. Gerardo della Paolera & Xavier H. Duran Amorocho & Aldo Musacchio, 2018. "The Industrialization of South America Revisited: Evidence from Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia, 1890-2010," NBER Working Papers 24345, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Coyle, Christopher & Musacchio, Aldo & Turner, John D., 2019. "Law and finance in Britain c.1900," Financial History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 26(3), pages 267-293, December.
    20. Lazzarini, Sergio G. & Musacchio, Aldo, 2010. "Leviathan as a Minority Shareholder: A Study of Equity Purchases by the Brazilian National Development Bank (BNDES), 1995-2003," Insper Working Papers wpe_221, Insper Working Paper, Insper Instituto de Ensino e Pesquisa.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:bushst:v:53:y:2011:i:4:p:505-529. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/FBSH20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.