Timothy R. Whisler
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198290742
- eISBN:
- 9780191684838
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198290742.003.0002
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Business History
This chapter analyses British motor industry between 1945 and 1950 by focusing upon the debate between Tiratsoo and Barnett concerning the role of the government's reconstruction policy. The ...
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This chapter analyses British motor industry between 1945 and 1950 by focusing upon the debate between Tiratsoo and Barnett concerning the role of the government's reconstruction policy. The relationship between the government and the motor industry during the period of reconstruction was defined by the intersection of the following: risk, uncertainty, time frame, objectives, prevailing institutions, and the Labour government's sometimes cloudy political assumptions. Government policy-makers, facing a complex and critical short-term macroeconomic situation, required an immediate contribution from the motor manufacturers to ‘national interests’, which were defined by Labour as exports to hard-currency markets, full-employment, defence readiness, tripartism, and consumer choice. There was no evidence to suggest that this period marked a watershed in the decline of the industry, especially in view of the profits and sales of the 1950s and early 1960s.Less
This chapter analyses British motor industry between 1945 and 1950 by focusing upon the debate between Tiratsoo and Barnett concerning the role of the government's reconstruction policy. The relationship between the government and the motor industry during the period of reconstruction was defined by the intersection of the following: risk, uncertainty, time frame, objectives, prevailing institutions, and the Labour government's sometimes cloudy political assumptions. Government policy-makers, facing a complex and critical short-term macroeconomic situation, required an immediate contribution from the motor manufacturers to ‘national interests’, which were defined by Labour as exports to hard-currency markets, full-employment, defence readiness, tripartism, and consumer choice. There was no evidence to suggest that this period marked a watershed in the decline of the industry, especially in view of the profits and sales of the 1950s and early 1960s.
Timothy R. Whisler
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198290742
- eISBN:
- 9780191684838
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198290742.003.0003
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Business History
Mergers do not safeguard firms from long-term decline in terms of market share and profitability. The lack of sophisticated hierarchical corporate structures and vertical integration is evident in ...
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Mergers do not safeguard firms from long-term decline in terms of market share and profitability. The lack of sophisticated hierarchical corporate structures and vertical integration is evident in British industry compared to American and German industry. There is also a prevalence of unsophisticated corporate structures and personal management that can be observed after mergers take place. This chapter analyses how unsophisticated management techniques and corporate structures hindered the development of the progressively concentrated British industry. The consistency and pervasiveness of the strategy and structure of the British-owned motor manufacturers prior to 1968 reveals a path dependence that lead to the creation of unique British characteristics, which can be compared to characteristics of multinational and international rivals.Less
Mergers do not safeguard firms from long-term decline in terms of market share and profitability. The lack of sophisticated hierarchical corporate structures and vertical integration is evident in British industry compared to American and German industry. There is also a prevalence of unsophisticated corporate structures and personal management that can be observed after mergers take place. This chapter analyses how unsophisticated management techniques and corporate structures hindered the development of the progressively concentrated British industry. The consistency and pervasiveness of the strategy and structure of the British-owned motor manufacturers prior to 1968 reveals a path dependence that lead to the creation of unique British characteristics, which can be compared to characteristics of multinational and international rivals.
Hugh Thomas
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300121094
- eISBN:
- 9780300142464
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300121094.001.0001
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Economic History
This book presents the biography of the extraordinary Spanish industrialist and entrepreneur Eduardo Barreiros, who was a conquistador. He conquered markets, not peoples, and these conquests began in ...
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This book presents the biography of the extraordinary Spanish industrialist and entrepreneur Eduardo Barreiros, who was a conquistador. He conquered markets, not peoples, and these conquests began in his own country, Spain, not in Mexico or in Peru, where men such as Cortés and Pizarro made their names. Barreiros's triumphs included exports in countries as far removed and as far apart as Egypt and Venezuela and Portugal and Germany. Barreiros came to maturity in the 1950s, when the regime in Franco's Spain was almost as hostile to private enterprise as Communist ministers would have been. Successive Spanish ministers of industry, Suanzes in particular but also Sirvent and the alleged modernizer López Bravo, spurned independent entrepreneurs, and were still advocates of national syndicalism, which, in practice, was a kind of bureaucratic statism. Barreiros, who, with his brothers, created a large industrial empire from nothing in ten years, proved that these great men were mistaken. He was a motor manufacturer and made trucks, tractors, buses, and, finally, saloon cars. The later life of Barreiros had its frustrations as well as its triumphs.Less
This book presents the biography of the extraordinary Spanish industrialist and entrepreneur Eduardo Barreiros, who was a conquistador. He conquered markets, not peoples, and these conquests began in his own country, Spain, not in Mexico or in Peru, where men such as Cortés and Pizarro made their names. Barreiros's triumphs included exports in countries as far removed and as far apart as Egypt and Venezuela and Portugal and Germany. Barreiros came to maturity in the 1950s, when the regime in Franco's Spain was almost as hostile to private enterprise as Communist ministers would have been. Successive Spanish ministers of industry, Suanzes in particular but also Sirvent and the alleged modernizer López Bravo, spurned independent entrepreneurs, and were still advocates of national syndicalism, which, in practice, was a kind of bureaucratic statism. Barreiros, who, with his brothers, created a large industrial empire from nothing in ten years, proved that these great men were mistaken. He was a motor manufacturer and made trucks, tractors, buses, and, finally, saloon cars. The later life of Barreiros had its frustrations as well as its triumphs.
