Abstract
Britain — the leading manufacturing nation of the Industrial Revolution — has, in the last third of the twentieth century, registered some of the lowest levels of manufacturing productivity in the advanced, industrialized world. This relative decline has focused attention on the reasons why other manufacturing nations — first America, then more recently Germany, France, Japan and Italy — overtook her. Comparisons with different countries have drawn attention to many possible causes but have the differences been too sharply drawn? In what follows, Section 2 and 3 argue that Britain has been consistently nearer to the twentieth-century Western-European norm than has recently been suggested by North American scholars.1
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Notes
For example. A. D. Chandler, Scale and Scope (Cambridge, Mass. 1990): David C. Mowery and Nathan Rosenberg, Technology and the Pursuit of Economic Growth (New York, 1989); David C. Mowery, ‘Finance and Corporate Evolution in Five Industrial Economies, 1900–1950. in Vera Zamagni (ed.). Finance and the Enterprise (London, 1992).
Calculations by S. Broadberry, reported in N. F. R. Crafts Can De-industrialisation Seriously Damage Your Wealth? (Institute of Economic Affairs, London. 1993), p. 19.
D. F. Channon. The Strategy and Structure of British Enterprise (London. 1973): Harvard dissertations by G. P. Dyas, C. H. Thanheiser and R. J. Pavan on Finance, Germany and Italy, respectively, referred to in Bruce R. Scott. ‘The Industrial State: Old Myths and New Realities’, Harvard Business Review (March–April 1973); Chandler, op. cit.
See, for example. Christopher J. Schmitz, The Growth of Big Business in the United States and Western Europe, 1850–1939 (London, 1993).
Economic History Review, XLIV: 3, August 1991, pp. 500–14; Business History Review, 64: 4, Winter 1990, pp. 703–10; Business History, 33: 2. April 1991, pp. 297–309.
For example, L. Hannah (ed.), From Family Firm to Professional Management (Budapest, 1982).
S. J. Prais, Productivity and Industrial Structure (Cambridge, 1981).
L. Rostas, ‘Industrial Production, Productivity and Distribution in Britain. Germany and the United States. 1935–37’, Economic Journal, LIII, April 1943, p. 46.
W. Lewchuk, American technology and the British vehicle industry (Cambridge, 1987).
Dyas, Thanheiser and Channon, op. cit.
Martin J. Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850–1950 (Cambridge, 1981).
R. Locke, Management and Higher Education since 1940: The Influence of America and Japan on West Germany, Great Britain and France (Cambridge, 1989).
Rostas. op. cit.
A. D. Smith. D. M. W. N. Hitchens and S. W. Davies, International Industrial Productivity: A Comparison of Britain, America and Germany (Cambridge, 1982).
For example. Edward F. Denison, Why Growth Rates Differ: Postwar Experience in Nine Western Countries (Washington, 1967).
D. C. Coleman. ‘Gentlemen and Players’, Economic History Review, 26 (1973).
Rostas, op. cit.
Paolo Cecchini, The European Challenge 1992: The Benefits of a Single Market (Wildwood House, Aldershot. 1988), p. 42.
For example, Marco Pagano and Ailsa Roell, ‘Dually-Traded Italian Equities: London versus Milan’. Financial Markets Group. LSE. Discussion Paper no. 116, 1991.
For example, Ranald C. Michie, The City of London: Continuity and Change 1850–1990 (London, 1992).
For a recent, sober review of this literature, see Michael Collins, Banks and Industrial Finance in Britain 1800–1939 (London, 1992).
For examples. Donald Moggridge, The Return to Gold 1925 (Cambridge. 1969).
John Kay, Foundations of Corporate Success (Oxford, 1993), pp. 331–2: Julian Franks and Colin Mayer, ‘Capital Markets and Corporate Control: A Study of France, Germany and the UK’, in Centre for Business Strategy, Continental Mergers are Different (London Business School, 1990).
Comparisons of the ratio of stock market values to GNP, of interlocking shareholdings and of the percentage of public corporations’ stock held by controlling directors typically place Britain and America at the extreme. At the end of 1992 for example the ratio of stock market capitalization to GDP in the UK was higher than in any other OECD country (Economist, 17 July 1993, p. 104).
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Hannah, L. (1996). Two Distorting Mirrors for British Manufacturing Performance: International and Sectoral Comparisons. In: Dosi, G., Malerba, F. (eds) Organization and Strategy in the Evolution of the Enterprise. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-13389-5_12
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