Managing managers: an early twentieth century service industry information system

This article examines the construction and operation of a service industry information system in the early years of the twentieth century. It sets the operations of the Birmingham, UK, company of Mitchells and Butlers in the context of the brewing industry and the operation of public houses. The surviving records are used to construct a picture of a complex and sophisticated information system which not only used accounting records to control managers, but also used the same managers as sources of information about the broader context. The apparent success of this system is set against the reluctance of other brewers to adopt it. This is seen in part to relate to the very complexity of the information system created, but also to the broader perceptions of brewers about the nature and status of their trade

Brewing in the North West, 1840–1914: sowing the seeds of service-sector management?

This paper explores the contours of brewing in the north-west of England in the period 1840 to 1914. While accounts of the region have been dominated by considerations of cotton and engineering, it is argued that there was considerable innovation in the brewing industry in the region, notably in the development of the direct management of public houses in Liverpool. However, such success failed to ensure the expansion of companies outside the region and the paper considers the factors which may have led to this. It concludes that the heterogeneity of practice in the region, in particular the tension between Liverpool and Manchester, meant that the baton of innovation was passed to the Birmingham brewers, whose further development of retailing lay at the heart of their eventual importance at national level

Concerns with mutual constitution: a critical realist commentary

The case for “analytical dualism” as a means of approaching sociotechnical action is presented as an alternative to accounts which tend to conflate agency, structure, and technology. This is based on the work of Margaret Archer, whose work is in turn located in the traditions of critical realism. Her commitment to analytical dualism, which stresses both the importance of time in analysis and the emergent properties of structure, is argued to give a firmer purchase on the notion of context than the alternatives based on, for example, the work of Giddens and Latour

Applying the ideas of Bernstein in the context of in-company management education

Ideas drawn from the sociology of education have had surprisingly little impact on debates on organizational learning. This article takes ideas drawn from the sociology of education and applies them to a subset of organizational learning, the rapidly growing in company management programmes supplied by higher education institutions. It is argued that such programmes are often populated by participants who traditionally might not have engaged in higher education, making the explanatory frameworks of Bourdieu and Bernstein (with their central focus on education and class) relevant. An application of the concepts of Bernstein points to a need to make the notion of `relevance' in education problematic and to reasons why some participants might find the realization of a competent performance difficult

Shaping the public house 1850-1950: business strategies, state regulation and social history

Much cultural and social history fails to engage fully with business history, resulting in an impoverished view of central institutions such as the public house. Using the twin concepts of control and interpretation, and with a particular focus on managed houses, the article suggests that the degree of control exercised by companies over the character of public houses during the period has been exaggerated. While there was an increasing degree of control over public houses in terms of ownership and product range, this control was not necessarily used to influence the character of the house. Many companies left such concerns to their tenants, viewing their pubs as distribution points rather than retail outlets. Changes to the pub, such as the 'improved public house', were as much about the respectability of the trade in response to regulatory pressures as about meeting customer needs. An appreciation of contrasting business strategies can give a richer picture of the public house and its place in popular culture