British Steel Industry Research Articles

Improving Swedish Steelmaking: Circulation and Localized Knowledge-Making in Early Modernity.

This article explores the multicentered processes that transformed artisanal metalworking in early modern Europe. It does so through an in-depth analysis of the attempts to improve steelmaking in eighteenth-century Sweden. Scholarship has traditionally focused on progress in the British steel industry, but the quest for improvement in Sweden's expanding steel sector, integrating various forms of cross-border mobility, illustrates a more spatially and temporally diverse history of technological development. This case study underlines the need to consider a wider group of actors and practices in metallurgical advances and elucidates the interaction between statecraft, scientific inquiry, and artisanal work, thereby highlighting the work-related foundations for novel perceptions of economic and industrial progress.

Greening steel work: Varieties of Capitalism and the ‘greening’ of skills

An important driver of change in work, employment and skills is European Union policy aims of sustainable economic growth and the cultivation of a green economy. Part of the latter – which is supported by increasing environmental regulation – focuses on the development of a ‘green skills agenda’, which involves the ‘greening’ of existing occupations as well as meeting the skill needs of new environmental sectors and occupations. In this paper, we compare attempts to ‘green’ work and skills through an examination of engineering apprenticeships within the German and British steel industries. We argue that efforts to ‘green’ skills are taking place at varying degrees of intensity, mostly because of variations in institutional context. The evidence we present suggests that implementation of change is much more dynamic in the context of Coordinated Market Economies such as Germany, where development is shaped by robust VET frameworks and wider processes of environmental innovation. In contrast, within Liberal Market Economies such as the UK, there are significant barriers to the vision for and investments in skills generally, as well as those necessary for greening the labour process, with an extant development paradigm that is driven by short-term benefits and a limited focus on environmental compliance.

Wartime control of the British Steel industry during World War I

Wartime control of the British Steel industry during World War I

IFORS' Operational Research Hall of Fame Stafford Beer

Innovative Operational Research practitioner, intellectual leader in the development of systems ideas, and founder of the field of management cybernetics. Born: September 25, 1926 in London, England. Died: August 23, 2002 in Toronto, Canada. Education: D.Sc., University of Sunderland, 2000. Key positions: Production Controller and Head of OR Group, Samuel Fox (1949–1956); Head, Operational Research and Cybernetics, United Steel (1956–1961); Managing Director, SIGMA (1961–1966); Development Director, International Publishing Corporation (1966– 1970); Consultant (1970–2002). Awards and Recognition: Silver Medal, Royal Swedish Academy for Engineering Sciences (1958); Lanchester Prize, Operations Research Society of America (1966); McCullough Plaque of the American Society for Cybernetics (1970); Norbert Weiner Gold Medal, World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics (1984); Lifetime Achievement Award, UK Systems Society (1999); Honorary degrees: Doctor of Laws, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada (1988); Doctor of Economic Sciences, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland (2000). Key OR roles: President, Operational Research Society (1970–1971); President, Society for General Systems Research (1971–1972); President, World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics (1970–the time of his death). Stafford Beer was one of the most remarkable figures that Operational Research (OR) in any country has produced. A charismatic, even flamboyant, character, he founded two major and pioneering OR groups; wrote some of the best books about the subject; and was a world leader in the development of systems ideas. He is widely acknowledged as the founder of the field of International Transactions in Operational Resarch.

Costing, pricing and politics in the British steel industry, 1918–1967

Steel occupied an important place in British industry throughout the period covered by this paper, supplying raw materials for the production of capital goods such as machinery, ships, buildings, bridges and motor vehicles. Much of the existing relevant literature on uniform costing is confined to a discussion of its potential for price fixing by companies concerned to drive out ‘cutthroat competition’ from within a particular trade. This paper, in contrast, studies the tensions surrounding central government’s use of uniform costing data as the basis for fixing prices at a level designed to produce a reasonable return on investment, encouraging modernization and enabling informed decisions to be made concerning the assessment of development plans. The paper demonstrates the problematic role of accounting as a basis for resource application decisions in two separate ways. First, the difficulty of devising and implementing an effective system of uniform costing, given the technical frailty of what was being attempted, and the unwillingness of companies to change established accounting procedures. Second, the reluctance and in some cases refusal of companies to supply neutral accounting numbers to help government reach decisions—pricing and import tariffs—that affect their economic value.

The Frontier of National Sovereignty: History and Theory, 1945-1992.

1. Interdependence or Integration? A National Choice 2. Migration as an Issue in European Interdependence and Integration - The Case of Italy 3. Restoring France - The Road to Integration 4. Between Interdependence and Integration - Denmark's Shifting Strategies 5. Inside or Outside the Magic Circle? The Italian and British Steel Industries Face to Face With the Schuman Plan and the European Coal, Iron and Steel Community in the early 1950s 6. Interdependence and Integration in American Eyes - From the Marshall Plan to Currency Convertibility 7. Conclusions - The Value of History.

Enterprise and Technology: The German and British Steel Industries, 1865-1895

Introduction 1. The technology of late nineteenth-century steelmaking 2. Expanding into the Slump: the railways as major customers of the new steel industry 3. Surmounting the Slump: the individual strategies of firms 4. Surmounting the Slump: collective strategies 5. New processes and new markets 6. Efficiency and capacity for innovation Sources and bibliography Index.

Enterprise and Technology: The German and British Steel Industries, 1865–1895 by Ulrich Wengenroth

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 405 Enterprise and Technology: The German and British Steel Industries, 1865— 1895. By Ulrich Wengenroth. Translated by Sarah Tenison. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xiv + 293; figures, ta­ bles, notes, bibliography, index. $59.95. This is an English version of a book first published in German in 1986. The translation is fully justified, for it will permit and encour­ age a much wider readership for this superb comparative study of the relationship between business strategy and technical change. The author reveals the evolutionary paths which led to the different struc­ tures of the German and British steel industries in the three or four decades after Bessemer’s discovery freed the iron industry from pud­ dling. Organizational changes are seen to be a response to technical possibilities, which, in turn, were strongly influenced by both the availability of raw materials and market opportunities. Despite the well-known richness of the literature on the modern steel industry, it may safely be asserted that the degree of sophistica­ tion displayed in the analysis of technical change is unprecedented. Ulrich Wengenroth indicates more clearly than any of his eminent predecessors the economic implications of the modern innovations in late-19th-century steelmaking. In doing so, he demolishes the idea of British scientific or technological backwardness in this industry, and hence destroys many of the arguments on which the case for Britain’s entrepreneurial failure has hitherto rested. Donald McCloskey’s con­ clusions are seen to be correct, but for entirely the wrong reasons; the counterarguments of D. L. Burn, Robert Allen, and Steven Webb are seen to be derived from false premises or are condemned as irrelevant. Only in that, unlike their German counterparts, British steel masters failed to use their collective market power to secure concessions from the government are they culpable. It is a remarkable tour de force. Wengenroth’s observations carry conviction because of the sheer depth of his technical understanding, his exhaustive documentation (his use of both British and German business records is admirable), and the coherence of the various strands of his argument. For exam­ ple, his emphasis on the American contribution to speeding up the process of steel conversion has never been given proper credit in European studies; and his clear analysis of the structure of the de­ mand for steel in Germany, so very different from that in Great Britain, is of great importance. It would be invidious to single out further specific examples, but the influence of the tariffs that con­ fronted British steel exporters in determining the nature of their sales is worth reaffirming because of its comparative neglect. When the British iron and steel industry is criticized for sending ingots and semis abroad (and for not further processing such products them­ selves), Wengenroth makes it plain that demand conditions and the existence of customs barriers frequently gave them no alternative. A simple point, but one inadequately recognized in the literature. 406 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE This is an important book which will provoke thought and contin­ ued debate. Because every page is dense with carefully marshaled information, it does not make for easy reading, though the transla­ tion—otherwise apparently admirable—may marginally have com­ pounded this difficulty by occasional misconceptions in technical terms. Furthermore, many cost comparisons would have been more meaningful had a guide (however crude) been provided to contempo­ rary sterling/mark exchange rates. Cambridge University Press is to be congratulated on making the book available in English and—to hell with the trouble and expense—putting the footnotes where they should be, at the bottom of the relevant pages. It is a pity that the author did not employ the opportunity presented by this English version to comment on the various recent contributions to the history of steel (e.g., Kenneth Barraclough’s important study, Steelmaking, 1850—1900 [London: Institute of Metals, 1990]) that have appeared since the mid-1980s. No one could have done so with greater authority. Peter L. Payne Dr. Payne, professor of economic history at the University of Aberdeen, is the author of Colvilles and the Scottish Steel Industry (Oxford, 1979), and Growth and Contrac­ tion: Scottish Industry...

Enterprise and Technology: The German and British Steel Industries, 1865-1895

Enterprise and Technology: The German and British Steel Industries, 1865-1895

Book Review: Steel Industries Compared, Enterprise and Technology: The German and British Steel Industries 1865–1895

Book Review: Steel Industries Compared, Enterprise and Technology: The German and British Steel Industries 1865–1895

Enterprise and Technology: The German and British Steel Industries, 1865–1895. By Ulrich Wengenroth. Translated by Sarah Hanbury Tenison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xiv, 293. (No price given.)

Enterprise and Technology: The German and British Steel Industries, 1865–1895. By Ulrich Wengenroth. Translated by Sarah Hanbury Tenison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xiv, 293. (No price given.) - Volume 54 Issue 3

Enterprise and Technology; The German and British Steel Industries, 1865-1895.

Enterprise and Technology; The German and British Steel Industries, 1865-1895.

Book reviews

Book reviewed in this article:C. M. Woolgar, ed., Household accounts from medieval EnglandDavid Gary Shaw, The creation of a community: the city of Wells in the middle agesMark Bailey, ed., The bailiffs'minute book of Dunwich, 1404‐1430Robert Brenner, Merchants and revolution: commercial change, political conflict, and London's overseas traders, 1550‐1653John Hatcher, The history of the British coal industry, 1: Before 1700: towards the age of coalKenneth Morgan, Bristol and the Atlantic trade in the eighteenth centuryMaurice W. Kirby, The origins of railway enterprise: the Stockton and Darlington Railway, 1821‐1863D. C. M. Platt, with A. J. H. Latham and Ranald Michie, Decline and recovery in Britain's overseas trade, 1873‐1913Nick Tiratsoo and Jim Tomlinson, Industrial efficiency and state intervention: Labour, 1939‐1951Rodney Lowe, The welfare state in Britain since 1945Ben Fine, Women's employment and the capitalist familyRoger Magraw, A history of the French working class, is‘The age of artisan revolution, 1815‐1871′ (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. Pp. Xi + 301. £40); II: Workers and the bourgeois republic, 1871‐1939 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. Pp. Vi + 330. £40)Ulrich Wengenroth, Enterprise and technology; the German and British steel industries, 1865‐1895Joseph Harrison, The Spanish economy: from the Civil War to the European CommunityLenard R. Berlanstein, ed., The industrial revolution and work in nineteenth‐century EuropeP. C. Emmer and M. Morner, eds., European expansion and migration: essays on the inter‐continental migration from Africa, Asia and EuropeDavid W. Ellwood, Rebuilding Europe: Western Europe, America and postwar reconstructionRobert E. Gallman and John Joseph Wallis, eds., American economic growth and standards of living before the Civil WarChristopher J. Schmitz, The growth of big business in the United States and Western Europe, 1850‐1939Michael D. Bordo and Barry J. Eichengreen, eds., A retrospective on the Bretton Woods system: lessons for international monetary reformS. A. M. Adshead, Salt and civilizationDavid Grigg, The transformation of agriculture in the west

Business and Investment Strategies in the Inter-War British Steel Industry: A Case Study of Hadfields Ltd and Bean Cars

(1987). Business and Investment Strategies in the Inter-War British Steel Industry: A Case Study of Hadfields Ltd and Bean Cars. Business History: Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 47-72.

Steel, South Africa and sanctions

Abstract While detestation of the South African regime is widespread, many British companies and trade unions are still hesitant about pressing for a severance of their South African links. In this article Peter Gibbon looks at the problem with special reference to the British steel industry.

The Comparative Efficiency of Public and Private Enterprise in Britain: Electricity Generation Between the World Wars

The present British government's interest in transferring the ownership and control of nationalised industries into private hands appears to have been unaccompanied by any detailed analysis of whether, and if so by how much, privatisation will produce efficiency benefits. Crude comparisons reported in the daily press cannot claim to hold other factors constant. Pryke's (1981) study of British nationalised industry performance and Rowley and Yarrow's (1981) study of the British steel industry are among the few academic references to experience outside North America.1 Here we tap a rich vein of experience to compare the productive efficiency of the enterprise types under a distinctively British (i.e. not 'armslength') approach to regulation. Recent British economic history has rarely thrown up data as useful as that in the United States where comparable plants co-exist under different control regimes, but earlier periods have. The supply of electricity between the world wars by mixed ownership is very well documented in the Reports of the Electricity Commissioners. We focus on electricity generation rather than supply as a whole, partly to ensure a greater homogeneity of the products of the firms and partly because of interest in the 1983 Energy Act allowing private generation to supply the CEGB with electricity for grid distribution. First we discuss some general ideas on comparative performance of public and private enterprise and consider the relevance of these ideas to an evaluation of efficiency in the electricity industry. In the second section we specify the cost function for the industry, then go on to discuss the data and the sample. In Section III we present the parameter estimates and consider their implications. This is followed by a short concluding section.

The management of technological change in the British steel industry

The management of technological change in the British steel industry

A Class against Itself: Power in the Nationalisation of the British Steel Industry

A Class against Itself: Power in the Nationalisation of the British Steel Industry

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:CAN MINISTERS COPE? Australian Federal Ministers at Work. By Patrick Weller and Michelle Grattan.JAMES MACARTHUR: Colonial Conservative, 1798–1867. By John Manning Ward.A JUST SOCIETY? Essays on Equity in Australia. Edited by P. N. Troy.EQUITY IN THE CITY. Edited by P. N. Troy.INNOVATION AND REACTION: The life and death of the Federal Department of Urban and Regional Development. By C. J. Lloyd and Patrick N. Troy.SYDNEY; A Social and Political Atlas. By Michael Poulsen and Peter Spearritt.TOWARDS ADAPTIVE FEDERALISM; A Search for Criteria for Responsibility Sharing in a Federal System.PARLAMENTARISCHE BUNDESSTAATEN IM COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS: KANADA, AUSTRALIEN, INDIEN: Ein Vergleich. Bd I. Grundbegriffe und Grundlagen.UNDERSTANDING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION. Edited by G. R. Curnow and R. L. Wettenhall.DECISIONS: Case Studies in Australian Public Policy. Edited by Sol Encel, Peter Wilenski and Bernard Schaffer.THE ABC–AUNT SALLY AND SACRED COW. By Clement Semmler.MELBOURNE STUDIES IN EDUCATION 1981. Edited by Stephen Murray‐Smith.HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES PRACTICE Edited by J. A. Pettifer.AUSTRALIAN IMPERIALISM IN THE PACIFIC: The Expansionist Era 1820–1920. By Roger C. ThompsonCRITICAL ESSAYS IN AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Edited by Graeme Duncan.WOOL IN WARTIME: A Study in Colonialism, by Les White.NORTHERN AUSTRALIA: Options and Implications. Edited by Rhys Jones.GUIDE TO NORTHERN TERRITORY RESEARCH RESOURCES IN NORTHERN TERRITORY COLLECTIONS. Compiled by M.A. Clinch for the Northern Territory Government.THE ABORIGINAL TASMANIANS. By Lyndall Ryan.ALBERT HAHL: Governor in New Guinea. Edited and translated by Peter G. Sack and Dymphna Clark.Peter Biskup, ‘Dr Albert Hahl–Sketch of a German Colonial Official’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 14 (3), 1968, 343–57.Peter Sack, Land Between Two Laws: early European Land acquisitions in New Guinea (Canberra, 1973).Stewart Firth, ‘Albert Hahl: Governor of German New Guinea’, in James Griffin (ed.), Papua New Guinea Portraits: The Expatriate Experience (Canberra, 1978), 28–48.WOMEN, POLITICS AND CHANGE: The Kaum Ibu UMNO, Malaysia, 1945–1972. By Lenore Manderson.UNEQUAL TREATY 1898‐1997: China, Great Britain and Hong Kong's New Territories. By Peter Wesley‐Smith.THE LAST COLONY: But Whose? A study of the labour movement, labour market and labour relations in Hong Kong. By H.A. Turner et al.CHINA'S INTELLECTUAL DILEMMA: Politics and University Enrolment, 1949–1978. By Robert Taylor.ANATOMY OF THE RAJ: Russian Consular Reports. Edited by Suhash Chakravarty.CLASS AND ECONOMIC CHANGE IN KENYA: The Making of an African Petite Bourgeoisie 1905–1970. By Gavin Kitching.THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT. Fourth Edition. By Anthony H. Birch.AMERICAN GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS. Third Edition. By Allen M. Potter, Peter Fotheringham and James G. Kellas.THE PROJECTION OF BRITAIN: British Overseas Publicity and Propaganda 1919–1939. By Philip M. Taylor.GREAT BRITAIN GREAT EMPIRE: An Evaluation of the British Imperial Experience. By W. Ross Johnston.THE BRITISH BUSINESS ELITE: Its attitudes to Class, Status and Power. By John Fidler.A CLASS AGAINST ITSELF: Power and the Nationalisation of the British Steel Industry. By Doug McEachern.A LIBERAL DESCENT: Victorian Historians and the English Past. By J. W. Burrow.THE GREAT POWERS OF THE EUROPEAN STATES SYSTEM 1815 1914. By F. R. Bridge and Roger Bullen.WHO WERE THE FASCISTS: Social Roots of European Fascism. Edited by Stein Ugelvik Larsen, Bern! Hagtvet and Jan Petter Myklebust.DECEPTION IN WORLD WAR II. By Charles Cruickshank.THE GERMAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY, 1875‐1935: From Ghetto to Government. By W. L. Guttsman.DIE DEUTSCHE INFLATION 1914–1923. Ursachen und Folgen in internationaler Perspektive. By Carl‐Ludwig Holtfrerich.INTERPRETING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. By François Furet.TSAR ALEXIS: His Reign and His Russia. By Joseph T. Fuhrmann.DIARY OF VOLODYMYR VYNNYCHENKO, Vol. 1, 1911–1920. Edited by Hryhory Kostiuk.THE ETHNIC REVIVAL IN THE MODERN WORLD. By Anthony D. Smith.POLITICS IN ETHNICALLY BIPOLAR STATES: Guyana, Malaysia, Fiji. By R. S. Milne.ETHNIC SOLDIERS: State security in a divided society. By Cynthia H. Enloe.ELITES IN AMERICAN HISTORY: The Federalist Years to the Civil War. By Philip H. Burch.BRITISH REGULARS IN MONTREAL: An Imperial Garrison, 1832–1854. By Elinor Kyte Senior.THE POLITICS OF THE SECOND ELECTORATE: Women and Public Participation–Britain, USA, Canada, Australia, France, Spain, West Germany, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Eastern Europe, USSR, Japan. Edited by Joni Lovenduski and Jill Hills.WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN: Essays in Philosophical Anthropology, Political Philosophy and Social Psychology. Edited by Ross Fitzgerald.JEAN BODIN: Selected Writings on Philosophy, Religion and Politics. Edited by Paul Lawrence Rose.MACHIAVELLI. By Quentin Skinner.CONSTITUTIONAL THEORY. By Geoffrey Marshall.THE DESIGN AND UNDERSTANDING OF SURVEY QUESTIONS. By William A. Belson.

Plant Size and Efficiency in the Steel Industry: an International Comparison

Steel is the basic material of industrialisation; and also of war. For Britain in the eighteenth century, iron and steel was the cornerstone of the industrial revolution; for Germany, a century later, the steel industry was the foundation of the militarism of Bismarck. Both countries supplied steel rails for America's westward expansion in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, before the emergence of America's own steel industry. Until the 1880s the British iron and steel industry was dominant. By the turn of the century both America and Germany had overtaken Britain as a steel producer. Today Britain has the smallest of the three industries. In 1979, a relatively good year, 21.5 million tonnes of crude steel were made in Britain, compared with 46 million in Germany and 123.3 in America.