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The Mid-Victorian Reform of Britain’s Company Laws and the Moral Economy of Fair Competition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2020

DAVID CHAN SMITH Open the ORCID record for DAVID CHAN SMITH [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract

This paper reconstructs the history of the reform of Britain’s company laws during the 1850s and makes three major arguments. First, the Law Amendment Society was the driving force for reform and organized the campaign for change. Second, the advancement of working-class interests and ideas of fairness were central to the conceptualization of these reforms and the course of their advocacy. Company law reform was broadly conceived to include the revision of the law of partnership, corporations, and cooperatives to create a level playing field in which smaller entrepreneurs could compete against established capitalists. Finally, central to this campaign was the institutional logic of “fair competition.” Socialists and liberals both used this logic, demonstrating how moral ideas can shape organizational change.

Keywords

cooperationpolitical economycompany lawlimited liabilityco-operativesmoral economygeneral incorporation
Type
Article
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , December 2021 , pp. 1103 - 1139
Copyright
© The Authors 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

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Footnotes

The author wishes to thank Koji Yamamoto for suggesting this article in the first place; Michael Lobban and Amy Milne-Smith for kindly reading and commenting on earlier drafts; and Mark Billings, who provided a key insight in organizational theory. The essay was completed during a visiting fellowship at the Bodleian Library and Jesus College, University of Oxford, and conversations there with Luca Enriques and Paulina Kewes helped to clarify the arguments. The Social Science and Humanities Research Council, Government of Canada, provided funding for this project (no. 435-2018-0689), and the Office of Research Services at Wilfrid Laurier University has been an invaluable source of support.

References

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Guinnane, Timothy, Harris, Ron, Lamoreaux, Naomi, and Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent. “Putting the Corporation in Its Place.” Enterprise & Society 8, no. 3 (2007), 687–729.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hilton, Boyd. “Moral Disciplines.” In Liberty and Authority in Victorian Britain, edited by Mandler, Peter, 224–246. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoppit, Julian. “Petitions, Economic Legislation and Interest Groups in Britain, 1660–1800.” Parliamentary History 37, no. 1 (2018): 52–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, C. “The Joint-Stock Company in England, 1830–1844.” Journal of Political Economy 43, no. 3 (1935): 331–364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huzzey, Richard. “Contesting Interests: Rethinking Pressure, Parliament, Nation, and Empire.” Parliamentary History 37, no. 1 (2018): 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ireland, Paddy. “Rise of the Limited Liability Company.” International Journal of the Sociology of Law 12 (1984): 239–260.Google Scholar
Ireland, Paddy. “Company Law and the Myth of Shareholder Ownership.” Modern Law Review 62, no. 1 (1999): 32–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jeffreys, J. B. “Trends in Business Organization in Great Britain Since 1856.” Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1938.Google Scholar
Johnson, Paul. “Class Law in Victorian England.” Past & Present, no. 141 (1993): 147–169.Google Scholar
Johnson, Paul A. “Market Disciplines.” In Liberty and Authority in Victorian Britain, edited by Mandler, Peter, 203–223. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel, Knetsch, Jack L., and Thaler, Richard H.. “Fairness and the Assumptions of Economics.” Journal of Business 59, no. 4 (1986): S285–S300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel, Knetsch, Jack L., and Thaler, Richard H.. “Fairness as a Constraint on Profit Seeking: Entitlements in the Market.” American Economic Review 76, no. 4 (1986): 728–741.Google Scholar
Lawrence, Thomas B., and Suddaby, Roy. “Institutions and Institutional Work.” In The SAGE Handbook of Organization Studies, 2nd ed., edited by Clegg, Stewart, Hardy, Cynthia, Lawrence, Thomas B., and Nord, Walter, 215–254. London: Sage, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Lobban, Michael. “Henry Brougham and Law Reform.” English Historical Review 115, no. 464 (2000): 1184–1215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Lobban, Michael. “Joint Stock Companies.” In The Oxford History of the Laws of England. Vol. 12, 1820–1914, Private Law, edited by Cornish, W. R., 613–673. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Maltby, Josephine. “UK Joint Stock Companies Legislation 1844–1900: Accounting Publicity and ‘Mercantile Caution.’” Accounting History 3, no. 1 (1998): 9–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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