Steven Toms
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 5166947 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Steven Toms |
| NOMBRES | Steven |
| APELLIDO | Toms |
| FIRMA | TOMS S |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Leeds |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6147-7828 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 27 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 112 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 28 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2000 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
Managing agency business groups, elite directors, and the rubber boom, 1897–1913
We identify a new organizational form, the Managing Agency Business Group (MABG), demonstrating how agency houses used interlocking directorships to build groups on the basis of commercial and plantation expertise to access finance on London stock markets and local capital markets in the pre‐1914 rubber boom. MABG boards combined managerial and commercial expertise with access to financial resources. Such features, rather than membership of elite…
Can Digital Technologies Support Sufficiency in Fashion? Evidence from Innovative UK Fashion SMEs
The far-reaching environmental impacts of the fashion industry are well documented. Although impact reduction per garment has improved, these gains are eclipsed by the steadily increasing rates of clothing consumption and production. Meaningful change can be achieved through the de-acceleration of consumption, aligned with concepts of degrowth and sufficiency. While this area is growing, research into conceptual developments and practical applica…
Economic freedom, financial development and the determinants of fraud and scandal
The paper argues that the incidence of financial fraud and scandals has systemic macro-economic determinants. While not denying organisation specific causes, short-run triggering events, and key players’ motivations, it shows that the extent of fraud and the number of financial scandals depend on the opportunities created by the financial system’s evolution. Using archival and quantitative evidence from the United Kingdom, it specifies aggregate …
From light touch to top management control
This research contributes to British multinational banking history, post-acquisition integration and legitimacy research, by exploring HSBC’s top management control integration with its first two acquired British banks, during the period 1960–1980, from the social psychological perspective of legitimacy judgement. It explores why HSBC’s key decision-maker’s legitimacy judgement of the initial decision to retain its acquired subsidiaries’ top mana…
Business History
The evolution of business history offers some radical ways forward for a discipline which is rich in potential. This shortform book offers an expert overview of how the field has relevance for contemporary business studies as well as the social sciences more broadly, as well as practitioners interested in historical perspectives. This book not only provides a comprehensive review of how the discipline of business history has evolved over the last…
Business History
A history of business history
This chapter concerns charting what can only be described as a transformational process, capturing how a specific discipline emerged out of a variety of influences. Interestingly, though, in none of the rapidly growing British business schools did business history feature specifically in either staff recruitment or their programmes, establishing a tradition that persists into the 2020s. Similarly, some social scientists were utilizing business hi…
Business history, international business and strategy scholarship
Perchard et al. have also attempted to develop an effective bridging mechanism between historical research and disciplines such as strategy, international business and entrepreneurship. Kobrak et al. speak only to business history audiences, resulting in what they call the ‘echo chamber effect’ that inhibits a meaningful conversation between the disciplines. The key to a resolution to this ‘echo chamber effect’ is much greater use of history by I…
Business history
This chapter elaborates on why business history has failed to make deeper inroads into the mindsets of practitioners and policymakers and offers some practical ideas on how business historians can engage with the world of policy and practice. Consequently, business history research seems to have failed to make much of an impact in this area. A key strength of business history research stems from its ability to put current issues in proper context…
Losing the Thread
The outbreak of the American Civil War, the Confederate embargo of cotton exports, and Union blockade of cotton ports led to short-time working and significant distress in the cotton districts of Lancashire. It was a pivotal moment in the history of the global textile trade. Surprisingly, the topic has attracted little attention and been the subject of even less debate. Jim Powell has written a highly readable and sometimes polemical account that…
Elite directors, London finance, and British overseas expansion
This article considers how international economic expansion impacts on the composition of elite groups on boards of companies. We examine, why, at the height of the British Empire, boards of national, imperial, and international railway companies, financed from London, were dominated by elites drawn differentially from the aristocracy, the military, finance, and politics. To investigate the reasons for these differences, we conduct a social netwo…
Entrepreneurship, Strategy, and Business Philanthropy
The article analyzes the relationship between entrepreneurial philanthropy and the competitive process. Competitive conditions interacted significantly with entrepreneurial responses to ethical problems posed by the rapid emergence of factory production following the British Industrial Revolution. Entrepreneurs’ attitudes toward regulation and the labor process are used to identify the major differences and similarities in competitive behavior. T…
Accessing capital markets
The article reconsiders the mid-1890s boom in which a large number of firms in the bicycle, pneumatic tyre and related industries were floated. It investigates why so many of these issues featured aristocratic directors in their prospectuses and finds that they represented social connections that were a necessary condition for regional industrial firms to gain a London listing. The case shows that the role and value of these directors was to acce…
The obsolescing bargain model and oil
We employ archival evidence to investigate events culminating in the nationalisation of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in 1951, which followed disagreements over profit allocations arising from a previously negotiated concession. The case study expands the traditional obsolescing bargain model (OBM) by accommodating the use and impact of accounting information in negotiation contexts. The analysis reveals that managerial control and the dep…
Marks & Spencer and the Decline of the British Textile Industry, 1950–2000
From the end of World War II, British clothing retailers—most notably, Marks & Spencer (M&S)—increasingly dominated the domestic textile industry, to some extent arresting its decline. This article uses financial and archival evidence to examine the distribution of costs and benefits in the M&S vertical network. It shows that these benefits became less tangible for textile firms from around 1985, in the context of lower-cost overseas competition.…
The Routledge Companion to Business History
The Routledge Companion to Business History is a definitive work of reference, and authoritative, international source on business history. Compiled by leading scholars in the field, it offers both researchers and students an introduction and overview of current scholarship in this expanding discipline. Drawing on a wealth of international contributions, this volume expands the field and explores how business history interacts theoretically and m…
Accounting and Capitalism
The “Enron stage of capitalism” illustrates how an accounting scandal, with serious implications for financial reporting and regulation, may also be an exemplar of the political and economic processes governing the evolution of global capitalism.
Ownership, financial strategy and performance
This article assesses the validity of John Maynard Keynes' claim that the Lancashire cotton industry failed to restructure because the banks as debt holders prevented firms exiting the industry, creating persistent over-capacity. Using case studies from a substantial sample of Lancashire firms, the article explores archival evidence to establish their financial characteristics, to examine their equity and debt finance and the governance roles of …
Producer co-operatives and economic efficiency
The relative efficiency of producer co-operatives is investigated through an examination of the financial performance of a group of cotton spinning firms that emerged from the spread of co-operative ideals after the mid-nineteenth century. Reflecting such influences these firms adopted two particularly important aspects of democratic governance: use of low denomination partly paid shares to encourage wide share ownership among local working class…
Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Control
A new conceptualization of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is presented as a means of asserting and maintaining corporate control in the face of political, economic, and social challenges. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) applied different strategies to maintain control of its Iranian assets in the face nationalist demands—political and covert mechanisms, market based, resource access controls, and CSR programs. This paper investigates …
Fifty years of Business History
Tribute to Charles Harvey
This issue of Business History not only marks 50 years since the journal's inception; it also sees the end of Charles Harvey's editorship. Charles took over as editor from Richard Davenport-Hines i
Competing perspectives on the ‘Managerial Revolution’
Debates about the role of capitalist corporations depend ultimately on their response to the enduring question of ‘who controls the large modern corporation’. This article aims to identify various competing schools of thought that can be classified as ‘managerialist’ and ‘anti-managerialist’, ‘mainstream’ and ‘radical’, which have emerged over the course of the last 70 years, moving on to consider how each has impacted on the discipline of busine…
Scale, scope and accountability
This is a response to the critique by Lloyd-Jones and Lewis of our 2003 Business History article. It makes a renewed case for the extension of business history research into corporate governance and accountability, such that this new dimension is considered in conjunction with the analysis of scale and scope. Our approach and that of Lloyd Jones and Lewis demonstrate that governance and accountability, or the lack of it, in conjunction with strat…
Financial institutions and corporate strategy
This article introduces and assesses a conceptual model of institutional and corporate change. In particular it seeks to integrate strategic choice and associated corporate structure with the role of the market for corporate control (MCC) as a governance mechanism. The model is illustrated using longitudinal case studies from the British textile industry with particular reference to the acquisition policy of David Alliance as he built up the Spir…
The Routledge Companion to Business History
The Routledge Companion to Business History is a definitive work of reference, and authoritative, international source on business history. Compiled by leading scholars in the field, it offers both researchers and students an introduction and overview of current scholarship in this expanding discipline. Drawing on a wealth of international contributions, this volume expands the field and explores how business history interacts theoretically and m…
Scale, scope and accountability
This article extends Chandler's scale and scope perspective using a synthesis with accountability and governance perspectives. The article also explains how various paradigms of political economy might be accommodated within the proposed business history synthesis. Accordingly, the intended outcome is a model that can explain why diverse organisational forms emerge, alongside the business strategies that accompany these changes during historical …
Divergence and Convergence within Anglo-American Corporate Governance Systems
The objective of this article is to compare the United States and British systems of business organisation and corporate governance during the last 50 years. Of particular interest is the contrasti
The obsolescing bargain model and oil
We employ archival evidence to investigate events culminating in the nationalisation of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in 1951, which followed disagreements over profit allocations arising from a previously negotiated concession. The case study expands the traditional obsolescing bargain model (OBM) by accommodating the use and impact of accounting information in negotiation contexts. The analysis reveals that managerial control and the dep…
Public Subsidy and Private Divestment
The investment and divestment policies of Lancashire cotton companies are examined by reference to historical financial and other archival data. Capital/product market and political/institutional constraints on entrepreneurial behaviour are evaluated. Lancashire entrepreneurs were faced with a legacy of over-capacity and a market situation that individual decisions could do little to later. Political constraints, especially in the form of taxatio…
Financial institutions and corporate strategy
This article introduces and assesses a conceptual model of institutional and corporate change. In particular it seeks to integrate strategic choice and associated corporate structure with the role of the market for corporate control (MCC) as a governance mechanism. The model is illustrated using longitudinal case studies from the British textile industry with particular reference to the acquisition policy of David Alliance as he built up the Spir…
Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Control
A new conceptualization of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is presented as a means of asserting and maintaining corporate control in the face of political, economic, and social challenges. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) applied different strategies to maintain control of its Iranian assets in the face nationalist demands—political and covert mechanisms, market based, resource access controls, and CSR programs. This paper investigates …
Producer co-operatives and economic efficiency
The relative efficiency of producer co-operatives is investigated through an examination of the financial performance of a group of cotton spinning firms that emerged from the spread of co-operative ideals after the mid-nineteenth century. Reflecting such influences these firms adopted two particularly important aspects of democratic governance: use of low denomination partly paid shares to encourage wide share ownership among local working class…
Accessing capital markets
The article reconsiders the mid-1890s boom in which a large number of firms in the bicycle, pneumatic tyre and related industries were floated. It investigates why so many of these issues featured aristocratic directors in their prospectuses and finds that they represented social connections that were a necessary condition for regional industrial firms to gain a London listing. The case shows that the role and value of these directors was to acce…
Scale, scope and accountability
This is a response to the critique by Lloyd-Jones and Lewis of our 2003 Business History article. It makes a renewed case for the extension of business history research into corporate governance and accountability, such that this new dimension is considered in conjunction with the analysis of scale and scope. Our approach and that of Lloyd Jones and Lewis demonstrate that governance and accountability, or the lack of it, in conjunction with strat…
Ownership, financial strategy and performance
This article assesses the validity of John Maynard Keynes' claim that the Lancashire cotton industry failed to restructure because the banks as debt holders prevented firms exiting the industry, creating persistent over-capacity. Using case studies from a substantial sample of Lancashire firms, the article explores archival evidence to establish their financial characteristics, to examine their equity and debt finance and the governance roles of …
Competing perspectives on the ‘Managerial Revolution’
Debates about the role of capitalist corporations depend ultimately on their response to the enduring question of ‘who controls the large modern corporation’. This article aims to identify various competing schools of thought that can be classified as ‘managerialist’ and ‘anti-managerialist’, ‘mainstream’ and ‘radical’, which have emerged over the course of the last 70 years, moving on to consider how each has impacted on the discipline of busine…
Entrepreneurship, Strategy, and Business Philanthropy
The article analyzes the relationship between entrepreneurial philanthropy and the competitive process. Competitive conditions interacted significantly with entrepreneurial responses to ethical problems posed by the rapid emergence of factory production following the British Industrial Revolution. Entrepreneurs’ attitudes toward regulation and the labor process are used to identify the major differences and similarities in competitive behavior. T…
Marks & Spencer and the Decline of the British Textile Industry, 1950–2000
From the end of World War II, British clothing retailers—most notably, Marks & Spencer (M&S)—increasingly dominated the domestic textile industry, to some extent arresting its decline. This article uses financial and archival evidence to examine the distribution of costs and benefits in the M&S vertical network. It shows that these benefits became less tangible for textile firms from around 1985, in the context of lower-cost overseas competition.…
Public Subsidy and Private Divestment
The investment and divestment policies of Lancashire cotton companies are examined by reference to historical financial and other archival data. Capital/product market and political/institutional constraints on entrepreneurial behaviour are evaluated. Lancashire entrepreneurs were faced with a legacy of over-capacity and a market situation that individual decisions could do little to later. Political constraints, especially in the form of taxatio…
Scale, scope and accountability
This article extends Chandler's scale and scope perspective using a synthesis with accountability and governance perspectives. The article also explains how various paradigms of political economy might be accommodated within the proposed business history synthesis. Accordingly, the intended outcome is a model that can explain why diverse organisational forms emerge, alongside the business strategies that accompany these changes during historical …
Divergence and Convergence within Anglo-American Corporate Governance Systems
The objective of this article is to compare the United States and British systems of business organisation and corporate governance during the last 50 years. Of particular interest is the contrasti
Scale, scope and accountability
This is a response to the critique by Lloyd-Jones and Lewis of our 2003 Business History article. It makes a renewed case for the extension of business history research into corporate governance and accountability, such that this new dimension is considered in conjunction with the analysis of scale and scope. Our approach and that of Lloyd Jones and Lewis demonstrate that governance and accountability, or the lack of it, in conjunction with strat…
Financial institutions and corporate strategy
This article introduces and assesses a conceptual model of institutional and corporate change. In particular it seeks to integrate strategic choice and associated corporate structure with the role of the market for corporate control (MCC) as a governance mechanism. The model is illustrated using longitudinal case studies from the British textile industry with particular reference to the acquisition policy of David Alliance as he built up the Spir…
Competing perspectives on the ‘Managerial Revolution’
Debates about the role of capitalist corporations depend ultimately on their response to the enduring question of ‘who controls the large modern corporation’. This article aims to identify various competing schools of thought that can be classified as ‘managerialist’ and ‘anti-managerialist’, ‘mainstream’ and ‘radical’, which have emerged over the course of the last 70 years, moving on to consider how each has impacted on the discipline of busine…
Fifty years of Business History
Tribute to Charles Harvey
This issue of Business History not only marks 50 years since the journal's inception; it also sees the end of Charles Harvey's editorship. Charles took over as editor from Richard Davenport-Hines i
Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Control
A new conceptualization of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is presented as a means of asserting and maintaining corporate control in the face of political, economic, and social challenges. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) applied different strategies to maintain control of its Iranian assets in the face nationalist demands—political and covert mechanisms, market based, resource access controls, and CSR programs. This paper investigates …
Producer co-operatives and economic efficiency
The relative efficiency of producer co-operatives is investigated through an examination of the financial performance of a group of cotton spinning firms that emerged from the spread of co-operative ideals after the mid-nineteenth century. Reflecting such influences these firms adopted two particularly important aspects of democratic governance: use of low denomination partly paid shares to encourage wide share ownership among local working class…
Accounting and Capitalism
The “Enron stage of capitalism” illustrates how an accounting scandal, with serious implications for financial reporting and regulation, may also be an exemplar of the political and economic processes governing the evolution of global capitalism.
Ownership, financial strategy and performance
This article assesses the validity of John Maynard Keynes' claim that the Lancashire cotton industry failed to restructure because the banks as debt holders prevented firms exiting the industry, creating persistent over-capacity. Using case studies from a substantial sample of Lancashire firms, the article explores archival evidence to establish their financial characteristics, to examine their equity and debt finance and the governance roles of …
Marks & Spencer and the Decline of the British Textile Industry, 1950–2000
From the end of World War II, British clothing retailers—most notably, Marks & Spencer (M&S)—increasingly dominated the domestic textile industry, to some extent arresting its decline. This article uses financial and archival evidence to examine the distribution of costs and benefits in the M&S vertical network. It shows that these benefits became less tangible for textile firms from around 1985, in the context of lower-cost overseas competition.…
The Routledge Companion to Business History
The Routledge Companion to Business History is a definitive work of reference, and authoritative, international source on business history. Compiled by leading scholars in the field, it offers both researchers and students an introduction and overview of current scholarship in this expanding discipline. Drawing on a wealth of international contributions, this volume expands the field and explores how business history interacts theoretically and m…
The obsolescing bargain model and oil
We employ archival evidence to investigate events culminating in the nationalisation of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in 1951, which followed disagreements over profit allocations arising from a previously negotiated concession. The case study expands the traditional obsolescing bargain model (OBM) by accommodating the use and impact of accounting information in negotiation contexts. The analysis reveals that managerial control and the dep…
Accessing capital markets
The article reconsiders the mid-1890s boom in which a large number of firms in the bicycle, pneumatic tyre and related industries were floated. It investigates why so many of these issues featured aristocratic directors in their prospectuses and finds that they represented social connections that were a necessary condition for regional industrial firms to gain a London listing. The case shows that the role and value of these directors was to acce…
Entrepreneurship, Strategy, and Business Philanthropy
The article analyzes the relationship between entrepreneurial philanthropy and the competitive process. Competitive conditions interacted significantly with entrepreneurial responses to ethical problems posed by the rapid emergence of factory production following the British Industrial Revolution. Entrepreneurs’ attitudes toward regulation and the labor process are used to identify the major differences and similarities in competitive behavior. T…
Elite directors, London finance, and British overseas expansion
This article considers how international economic expansion impacts on the composition of elite groups on boards of companies. We examine, why, at the height of the British Empire, boards of national, imperial, and international railway companies, financed from London, were dominated by elites drawn differentially from the aristocracy, the military, finance, and politics. To investigate the reasons for these differences, we conduct a social netwo…
Business History
The evolution of business history offers some radical ways forward for a discipline which is rich in potential. This shortform book offers an expert overview of how the field has relevance for contemporary business studies as well as the social sciences more broadly, as well as practitioners interested in historical perspectives. This book not only provides a comprehensive review of how the discipline of business history has evolved over the last…
Business History
A history of business history
This chapter concerns charting what can only be described as a transformational process, capturing how a specific discipline emerged out of a variety of influences. Interestingly, though, in none of the rapidly growing British business schools did business history feature specifically in either staff recruitment or their programmes, establishing a tradition that persists into the 2020s. Similarly, some social scientists were utilizing business hi…
Business history, international business and strategy scholarship
Perchard et al. have also attempted to develop an effective bridging mechanism between historical research and disciplines such as strategy, international business and entrepreneurship. Kobrak et al. speak only to business history audiences, resulting in what they call the ‘echo chamber effect’ that inhibits a meaningful conversation between the disciplines. The key to a resolution to this ‘echo chamber effect’ is much greater use of history by I…
Business history
This chapter elaborates on why business history has failed to make deeper inroads into the mindsets of practitioners and policymakers and offers some practical ideas on how business historians can engage with the world of policy and practice. Consequently, business history research seems to have failed to make much of an impact in this area. A key strength of business history research stems from its ability to put current issues in proper context…
Losing the Thread
The outbreak of the American Civil War, the Confederate embargo of cotton exports, and Union blockade of cotton ports led to short-time working and significant distress in the cotton districts of Lancashire. It was a pivotal moment in the history of the global textile trade. Surprisingly, the topic has attracted little attention and been the subject of even less debate. Jim Powell has written a highly readable and sometimes polemical account that…
From light touch to top management control
This research contributes to British multinational banking history, post-acquisition integration and legitimacy research, by exploring HSBC’s top management control integration with its first two acquired British banks, during the period 1960–1980, from the social psychological perspective of legitimacy judgement. It explores why HSBC’s key decision-maker’s legitimacy judgement of the initial decision to retain its acquired subsidiaries’ top mana…
Business (19 obras) · Economics (19 obras) · Political science (14 obras) · Business history (9 obras) · Historical Economic and Social Studies (9 obras) · Law (9 obras) · Management (9 obras) · Finance (8 obras) · Finance (8 obras) · History (8 obras)