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The article focuses on the business history of Sutherland family. The wealth of the Sutherland family was exercised in influential ways in nineteenth century Great Britain. It had a crucial effect on changes in transport technology in Lancashire; by this wealth was accumulated one of the finest private collections of fine art in Europe; it was employed with traumatic and transforming consequences in the Scottish Highlands; it sustained at least five major aristocratic houses including one which rivalled the royal establishment, itself; it was capital, which helped to improve agriculture on two leading Midland estates to a high peak of efficiency; it maintained a level of sheer consumption, which employed large numbers of servants and providers; it was wealth which flowed, often eccentrically, into unusual parts of the British economy, and to the rest of the world; and it subsidized the lives of a large circle of relatives in the Sutherland family. The purpose of the paper is to establish more clearly than before and for a longer period, some of the dimensions and origins of the great wealth of the Sutherland family. It seeks also to explore some of returns yielded by its investments.

Focuses on the business history in Great Britain. Use of plantation profits in industrial capital formation; Impact of slavery on the Industrial Revolution; Concerns of historians for business activity.

The article focuses on the new Business History Unit in London, England. Professor Leslie Hannah who is Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, took up the Directorship of the Business History Unit on a part-time basis from August 1, 1978. This will become a full-time appointment, of professional status, on January 1,1979. A second post in the Unit was advertised at the end of September 1978 and further posts will be advertised during 1980. The idea of the Unit dates back to the period 1972 to 1973 when professor L.S. Pressnell, professor T.C. Barker and professor W.J. Reader got together to discuss how best to move from the writing of company history, which had made such great strides in Great Britain during the previous fifteen years, to the broader study of business history itself. There was general agreement that Business History was a branch of academic study, which had been rather neglected by British universities. It was agreed from the outset that the relation of science and technology to the growth of industry should form part of the proposed Unit's activities.

In-migrants played an important role within port-city merchant communities, but the contribution of German-born merchants to Liverpool's development in the nineteenth century has been largely ignored. This article has four interrelated objectives. First, it establishes the size and composition of the German merchant community in terms of the place of birth, occupational classification, length of residence, and relative wealth of German-born merchants. Secondly, it measures the degree of acculturation and integration based on a range of indicators including choice of bride, child- and house-naming practices, the employment of fellow nationals, and the acquisition of British citizenship. Thirdly, it analyses their role within Liverpool society, focusing on their involvement in the city's associational networks, their participation in voluntary and charitable associations, and their entertainment profile. Finally it assesses how the growth of German nationalism after 1871 and the institutional role of the German Protestant Church reinforced ethnic identity, influenced decisions relating to citizenship and settlement, and affected business networking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on what appears from the surviving records to have been the most troublesome of the new Bank of England's functions: the telling of money. The Bank's tellers had a complex job and the mistakes they made often proved costly, thus careful consideration was given to the means by which errors could be limited and servants incentivised to perform at their best. The methods used to motivate the tellers and manage the department, therefore, can reveal much about the men who implemented Britain's financial revolution and can give insights into the reasons for the Bank of England's business success and subsequent longevity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial relations were reconstructed in the UK in the 1970s, but only in a limited way. This article examines how business preserved ultimate managerial prerogative in the organisation of the firm and the workplace by constraining the process of reconstruction. The analysis contributes to understanding of business in the 1970s and varieties of capitalism literature on comparative political economy by suggesting that changes in industrial relations were accepted by business only where congruent with corporate strategy. Evidence comes from industrial relations surveys and the Bullock Inquiry on board-level worker participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the diversity of business history and related periodical literature in Great Britain from 2005 to 2007. The author focuses on the international banking and financial business sectors of business. Contributing factors, including corporate governance, industrial relations, and trade, are examined. Europeanization is discussed. Studies related to corporate social responsibility, occupational safety, as well as a study comparing the business history of the U.S. to that of Great Britain are also mentioned.

Most research into the early telephone system has focused on telephone providers rather than users, and this article begins to address that imbalance. The telephone was initially used to improve internal communications within firms, by connecting offices with warehouses, or by enabling staff working away from the office to report back. With the expansion of exchange networks, the commercial, intermediary and brokering sectors became heavy users of the technology for routine information transfer within business districts. Business elites continued to favour face-to-face contact for strategic business negotiations, however, and delegated telephone use to their employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the innovation process in an important leisure-based industry in Great Britain since 1960. It explores the peculiar juxtaposition of social, economic, technological, and sporting forces, which provided the springboard for a number of British outdoor companies, including Karrimor, Berghaus and Mountain Equipment, to become leading international brands. More particularly, it highlights the way innovations were developed in relatively small entrepreneurial firms. The prime focus is on the way in which networking activity underpinned innovation and, by implication, the competitive advantage of firms. To achieve this, it also traces the bridges within the supply chain and, by exploring the relationship between innovation and markets, places an emphasis on products and their design. The small companies of the British outdoor trade were able to achieve high levels of innovation through a combination of personal knowledge and networks. The environment itself--with buoyant, emerging, and changing markets--encouraged innovation, which in turn was inseparable from sporting advances. Networking behavior also evolved through time, with changes in market conditions, company profiles, and the environment. Personal networks were especially important in the 1960s and 1970, when firms were small and where owners were usually responsible for both designing and marketing.

Great Britain's lacklustre industrial performance after the Second World War is the theme of several recent contributions the October 1, 2002 issue of the journal Business History. Most work in this area is written from a British perspective, but the present study views British industry through the minor of an important external market, New Zealand. The spotlight focuses on the failure of British exporters of diesel electric locomotives and heavy electrical plant to make the most of apparently excellent opportunities in New Zealand between 1945 and 1960. British firms occupied dominant positions in these segments of the New Zealand market for engineering goods in the early post-war period, but frittered their advantage away over the years that followed. Development and production expertise, which was already in limited supply, was spread too thinly across a range of products, resulting in the abandonment of delivery schedules and the loss of reputation. In 1949 the Sterling Area and most West European countries underwent a sharp devaluation against the U.S. dollar. The Canadian dollar was also devalued against the U.S. dollar, but by a lesser amount.

The article examines the development of the retail sector in eighteenth-century provincial Great Britain with particular reference to Hampshire. It suggests that the eighteenth century was a period of extensive and far-reaching change, and that many of the retail practices considered modern today were in fact introduced to the English purchasing public in the Hanoverian period. It suggests that the number and variety of shops operating in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century was probably greater than is usually supposed. The move to fixed place retailing is set against a background of changing wholesale and domestic distribution techniques and the significant demographic shills experienced at the time. The role of the market, fair, and itinerant trader are considered against the rise of the increasingly specialist resident retailer. Innovations in retail practice are examined, collectively indicating that retail distribution underwent a significant transformation in the late eighteenth century.

The article explores the characteristics of a set of retail markets in Lancashire, Great Britain during the nineteenth century. It investigates changing nature of nineteenth-century markets focusing specifically on their ownership and management, their physical form and trade. By revealing the resilience of markets in a county which experienced some of the most intense industrial and urban development of the period, it challenges those models of retail change which present an inverse relationship between economic and urban change on the one hand, and traditional modes of retailing on the other. It examines the ways in which the region's markets responded to the new problems and opportunities generated by their changing physical, economic and social environment, focusing in particular on their management, their trade and their temporal and physical organisation. It reveals how, contrary to undergoing displacement by fixed forms of' shop retailing, markets adopted some of their characteristics and evolved as modern, profitable, daily, undercover municipal stores.

This article focuses on the role of science and technology in business history in Great Britain. The place of science and technology in the British economy and society is widely seen as critical to our understanding of the performance of British business this century. Much of business history has failed for much the same reason as British businesses have allegedly failed. Rather than speculate whether the reasons might be similar it may be more profitable to link the neglect of science and technology to the neglect of economic and social theory by British economic and business historians. It should be noted that the connections between science and technology and business are central to theoretical accounts of industrial and capitalist society.