The work was conceived as an attempt to document an aspect of what has been called the rise of the "corporate economy" or of "managerial capitalism" (or, less informatively, the "new industrial revolution"): that is the relative decline of market relations within the system of industrial capitalism and the corresponding growth of economic activity within large corporations. Though this process of change began in Britain in the late nineteenth century, it advanced more slowly than the contemporaneous movement in the United States. Hence, it is argued, the interwar years saw the crucial developments in the structure of industry in Britain, though these have been underestimated because of the absence of a reliable descriptive study of this period. Attention is focussed on the role of mergers in this structural change, since a merger, being a discrete event in the biography of a firm, throws the causes of these developments into clear relief. The study is designed as a critical gloss on economic generalisations about the rise of large scale enterprise based on the propensity to monopolise, an explanation with no diachronic significance; and on the crude technolo- gical and economic determinisms dominating the historical writing which add little to Philip Snowden's classic statement that "trusts ... are inevitable. They will continue, whatever obstacles we attempt to put in their path". [continued in text ...]
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:458107 |
| Date | January 1972 |
| Creators | Hannah, Leslie |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:07ddbb62-a20f-4375-b100-49046dfe4d87 |
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