IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/buhirw/v68y1994i03p364-411_06.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Personal Capitalism and British Industrial Decline: The Personally Managed Firm and Business Strategy in Sheffield, 1880–1920

Author

Listed:
  • Lloyd-Jones, Roger
  • Lewis, Myrddin J.

Abstract

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., has maintained that the persistence of the personally managed firm in Britain may be a cause of that nation's long-run industrial decline. This article contributes to the debate over decline through a detailed exploration of the business role of personally managed firms in a strategic sector of the Second Industrial Revolution: the metal and metal-making trades of Sheffield. Our study shows that the business strategies of Sheffield firms, based on quality production and flexible technology, had close similarities to those of American companies described by scholars such as Philip Scranton. Many of the Sheffield firms were not lacking in enterprise; they demonstrated tenacity and, in certain key segments of the metal trades, enjoyed a high degree of business success. Our examination of personal capitalism in Sheffield suggests that the terms of the debate over Britain's industrial decline may require further refinement.

Suggested Citation

  • Lloyd-Jones, Roger & Lewis, Myrddin J., 1994. "Personal Capitalism and British Industrial Decline: The Personally Managed Firm and Business Strategy in Sheffield, 1880–1920," Business History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 68(3), pages 364-411, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:buhirw:v:68:y:1994:i:03:p:364-411_06
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0007680500061390/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Andrew Popp & John Wilson, 2007. "Life Cycles, Contingency, and Agency: Growth, Development, and Change in English Industrial Districts and Clusters," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 39(12), pages 2975-2992, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:cup:buhirw:v:68:y:1994:i:03:p:364-411_06. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/bhr .

    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.