INTRODUCTION

Most accounts of industrialisation stress the rapid rise of the factory, of powered technologies, and of large-scale plants and firms. Indeed the factory more than anything else has come to symbolise the industrial revolution and dominates popular imagery of the period. However, factories were slow to spread and uneven in their hold over sectors of manufacturing. Their development was a notable feature of the industrialising economy, and requires explanation, but their rise was limited and accompanied by a proliferation of small-scale enterprises, workshops, and domestic and dispersed forms of manufacturing employing a handful of workers and using hand tools as much as advanced machinery. Most concerns remained small and family firms predominated. These were not just lingering pre-industrial forms but an integral part of the modern industrial economy.

This chapter analyses the causes and consequences of variation in business organisation and structure. Consideration is given to the nature of products, markets and factor supplies and the interplay between technological change and organisational adaptation. Particular emphasis is placed upon the economic, social and cultural contexts in which enterprises operated, and which shaped their form and success. Communities, institutions and business networks, embodying knowledge, skills, experience and reciprocities, were crucially important in the high-risk, information-poor environment of the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These social and organisational structures did much to support varied rather than monolithic forms of enterprise.