INTRODUCTION

Britain holds a special place in Chandler's Scale and Scope. In his comparative study of the evolution of large industrial firms in the United States, Germany, and Britain before 1945, it is the latter that is cast as the failure. “The British story,” in Chandler's analysis, “provides a counterpoint – an antithesis – to the American experience.” “Britain is the place to study enterprises' failures to develop competitive strength.” This chapter begins by reviewing the Chandlerian interpretation of British business history before 1945 before turning to a fuller examination of the structure of British big business and management, and its performance, after World War II. A great deal has been written about the British economy in this period, much of it in a search for the “British disease” which explains its apparently inexorable decline. This chapter seeks not to duplicate this large literature, but to offer an interpretative survey, focused on the central Chandlerian concerns of the business enterprise, organizational capability, and competitiveness.

PERSONAL CAPITALISM BEFORE 1945

“The general failure to develop organizational capabilities weakened British industry and with it the British economy.” This is the heart of the Chandlerian view of British business history from the late nineteenth century until World War II. To a great extent, British firms failed to make (or make sufficiently) the three-pronged investment in manufacturing, marketing, and management that brought success to American and German firms in the new capital-intensive industries of the late nineteenth century.