Full papers
Full Papers
Building and Sustaining London Transports Corporate Strategy in a Time of Uncertainty 1963 - 87 (135)
Author/s: James Fowler
Track: Management and Business History
Paper Type: Full Papers
Keywords: London, Transport, Strategy, Hybrid, GLC
Abstract: This article critically analyses London Transports corporate strategy 1963 to 1987, from regaining independence as a quasi public organisation in the early 1960s to the return of privatised transport in the 1980s. As the result of huge modal shift in transport use from the 1950s onwards, a quarter of a century of financial failure resulted in a lengthy and turbulent period of clashes between the organisation, the public, the Greater London Council and central government over strategy and governance. These cumulated in top level sackings, resignations and the Fares Fair controversy between 1980 to 82 before the service was simultaneously renationalised and privatised after 1984. To identify and assess the strategies employed, a wide range of contemporary literature and archival sources from the period are used to develop and challenge theory on corporate competitive strategy and hybrid organisations. The article concludes by drawing lessons for theory and for todays Transport for London.
Flexibility Is Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose (137)
Author/s: Shane Hamilton
Track: Management and Business History
Paper Type: Full Papers
Keywords: trucking, deregulation, flexibility, strategy, uncertainty
Abstract: This paper explores the social and cultural consequences of the meaning of "independence," "freedom," and "flexibility" for American truck drivers in the decades since 1980. A profound shift in the regulatory landscape of American trucking has over the past four decades initiated a significant transformation in trucking firms' labor strategies, as certain firms have turned increasingly to contract labor to achieve greater flexibility in turbulent shipping markets fraught with uncertainty. Although the economic consequences of deregulation in American trucking have been well-studied, much less attention has been paid to how the cultural and social meaning of the work of driving a truck in America has changed since the deregulatory legislation of 1980. The work of truckers clearly captured a cultural mood in the 1960s and 1970s, the heyday of country trucking songs and popular movies and TV shows featuring truck drivers bantering on CB radios. The broader cultural appeal of trucking seems to have lessened since 1980, however, suggesting that shifting meanings of freedom and independence for truckers have made the presumed appeal of the open road less resonant both for professional drivers and for the broader public.
Late Nineteenth Century Strikes and the Origins of the Law-and-Order Leagues in the United States (340)
Author/s: Chad Eric Pearson
Track: Management and Business History
Paper Type: Full Papers
Keywords: Strikes, strikebreaking, repression, ruling class, law and order
Abstract: This paper explores the origins of the anti-labor union Law and Order Leagues in the mid-1880s. In the United States, employers and their allies organized these leagues to confront the so-called "labor problem" and to defend private property during a series of dramatic strikes in the 1880s. Here I focus on the activism of one of the movement's most important leaders, J. West Goodwin. A newspaper owner and urban booster from Sedalia, Missouri, Goodwin helped to stigmatize organized labor while building a repressive movement with other elites in Sedalia and throughout parts of the nation. During strikes, league members armed themselves and defended strikebreakers against "mobs" of protestors.
Enron and the California Energy Crisis: The Emergence of a Corrupt Collective (419)
Author/s: Adam Nix Stephanie Decker Carola Wolf
Track: Management and Business History
Paper Type: Full Papers
Keywords: Organisational corruption, Analytically structured history, Enron, Energy markets
Abstract: This paper provides an analytically structured history of Enrons involvement in the California energy crisis. That is, it narrates Enrons emergence as both a corrupt organisation and its role as the central actor within a broader interorganisational corrupt collective. Our analysis uses telephone and email records to develop a rich, fly on the way understanding of the organisations everyday operations and adoption of market manipulation as a route to divisional performance. In elaborating the corrupt collective as a new concept, we also show how the control of assets, information and assistance flowed to Enrons traders, who combined them with their own capabilities to manipulate the energy market. Additionally, this paper provides answers by narrating events over the course of the collectives existence, thus showing how its corrupt activities changed over time.
Governing as Minding the Institutional Gap (495)
Author/s: Gonzalo Jimenez Neil Pyper
Track: Management and Business History
Paper Type: Full Papers
Keywords: Chile, governance, institutions, business history
Abstract: This research conceptualizes the evolution of governance in Chile viewed by members of the governing elite through an institutional theory lens. It uses inductive qualitative methods derived from grounded theory to study how the notion of governing has adapted to three sets of institutional logics over a period of four decades. Corporate governance scandals as perceived by main actors are the lens through which institutional changes are observed. We analyze how each institutional logic gets superimposed to previous ones without nullifying them but adding increasing layers of complexity. This research hypothesizes how the B side of each institutional logic might derive from the linearity of each logic seeding the potential for a set of consequential scandals. This paper digs into the sources of institutional change associating them with transformations at the societal level. Finally, this research allows comparisons of corporate leaders and stakeholders, sensibilities recognizing new governing imperatives, extracting managerial and theoretical lessons.
Mary P Follett and Chester I Barnards Management Guide to Inclusivity (602)
Author/s: Susan Mawer
Track: Management and Business History
Paper Type: Full Papers
Keywords: Mary P. Follett, Chester I. Barnard, inclusive leadership, management social responsibility, historical management learning.
Abstract: Following the anniversaries of seminal publications of management writers Mary Parker Follett The New State, 1918 and Chester Irving Barnard The Functions of the Executive, 1938, this paper examines their work and implications for modern business and society. Follett proposed that business should operate primarily with social rather than economic goals governed by acceptable and widely promulgated codes of conduct. Barnard urged that ethics should be central to business strategies to benefit organizations and wider society. An analysis and synthesis of their significant publications is compared with thirteen principle management theories. This comparison exemplifies the relevance and freshness of their ideas for a new audience. Follett and Barnards great faith in the capacity of human beings to continually develop and grow intellectually informs a discussion and proposal for social responsibility, inclusive, management obligations to wider society.
The Narrative of the 1930s City of London and the Manufacturing North of England. (896)
Author/s: David Thomas Weir
Track: Management and Business History
Paper Type: Full Papers
Keywords: 1930s, manufacturing, fiction, narrative
Abstract: This paper contributes to the ongoing debate in historiography about the value of contemporary fiction as an additional or alternative source of historical authenticity and relates to the work of Nevil Shute Norway, who was a best selling novelist of the 1930s to 1960s under the nom de plume of Nevil Shute. In his main career he was a pioneering aircraft designer and airship engineer, taking over as Chief Design Engineer from the great Barnes Wallis on the R100 a successful Airship that flew safely from the UK to Canada and back. In his time he was the youngest fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, entrepreneur and founder of his own highly successful aircraft manufacturing company founded in the city of York. As Engineer, CEO and novelist, Nevil Shute was a triple success as a member of the Secret War a loose collection of military inventors, engineers and technologists he worked on secret eapons throughout World War 2. He was a senior manager and he wrote of managers in his novels and he outlined a theory of industrial management in his memoirs. His fiction writing persona bases his craft on the virtues of accuracy, contemporary recording and firm comprehension of technological, scientific and engineering realities and methodological principles. His career breaks the mould of the banal stereotypes that inhabit our textbooks. In particular, his career and contribution illuminate the development of management practice in the United Kingdom between the 1920s and 1950s. Management history comprises works of both non fiction and fiction as its raw material and Nevil Shute Norways oeuvre straddles both genres. In this paper we discuss how a best selling novel illuminates the history of his era.
Authentic Organisational Change: The Role Of Rhetorical History In The Creation Of Barclays Bank's Company Values (917)
Author/s: Ian Geoffrey Jones
Track: Management and Business History
Paper Type: Full Papers
Keywords: Rhetorical history, corporate archives, authenticity
Abstract:
Organisation studies has experienced a growth in interest in the of use of history at organisations. Scholars have shown the diverse ways that organisations have been able to use their history such as encouraging employee commitment, guiding organisational change, or achieving market place legitimacy. Additionally, many scholars have noted how the perception of authenticity is beneficial for organisations to strengthen relationships with stakeholders. However, how organisations can use rhetorical history strategies to create the perception of authenticity is not addressed. This paper will argue that judicious use of corporate archival resources can enable organisations to create narratives that may produce the perception of authenticity in stakeholders. It will use Barclays plc's launch of a new set of company values in 2012 as an illustration of this argument.
The City of London: Genealogy of a Contemporary Mercantilist Heterotopia (1179)
Author/s: Nelarine Cornelius Eric Pezet
Track: Management and Business History
Paper Type: Full Papers
Keywords: N/A
Abstract: The City of London The Square Mile, the main financial centre in the UK and ancient heart of London, has existed for centuries and has a distinctive place, it could be argued a space apart, from mainstream society. Its legal status and geographical boundaries make it what Foucaults calls a heterotopia. We study the genealogy of this heterotopia from the Norman period to the 19th century. Our work highlights how the City has developed its identity in two anomic contexts. The first is that of the mercantilist structuring of Britain, where a robust, monetary regime had to be installed, the City helped to crown,state to obtain sufficient state funds and limit the damage from a bond market crash during the reign of Charles II, a period of increased international trade and imperial ambition. Institutionally, this context was characterised by the development of relationships between the guilds and the crown, facilitated through royal charters. We focus in particular on one guild, the goldsmiths then goldsmiths bankers, who eventually become the Bank of England as well maintaining their expertise as principal goldsmiths who controlled the craft. The second anomic context commenced in the Renaissance, when the City contributed to the birth and rise of the first British Empire. Venturing and discovery revealed a lack of tailored financial services to support international commerce, exploration and shipping. The City developed itself through the creation of customised, specialist financial services in the areas of underwriting and insurance. New institutions, develop alongside the more traditional guilds and we consider one of them, Lloyds of London. This genealogy shows that the City has acquired power that allowed it to establish more relations with the crown or state such that both parties were aware of the power that could be exerted by the other i.e diplomatic relations were established in a Foucauldian sense