constraints and firm structure, culture and strategy to be explored in more detail, with particular emphasis on the balance struck between resource, marketing, and other responses at the firm of Mintons in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It will be shown that at Mintons business strategy followed on from existing organizational structures and the influence of the individuals who dominated them. This interpretation stands in contrast to Chandler’s model, in which structure follows strategy, and sits more easily with Church’s classic study of the Midlands hardware firm Kenricks. Thus, Church’s conclusion that at Kenricks ‘The existing structure and organization were taken as parameters rather than as variables’ has much relevance also to the practice of personal capitalism at Mintons (1). Thus, this study will be informed by Casson’s proposition that very often in assessing business strategy and performance ‘It is the quality of the culture.... which is crucial’ (2). By 1851, when international acclaim was accorded to its display of wares at the Great Exhibition, the firm of Mintons, founded in 1796 by Thomas Minton, was firmly established as one of the largest and most prestigious in the Potteries. The firm was in a position to exploit a ‘secure’ and ‘old established market connection’ and a carefully nurtured ‘reputation monopoly’ (3). However, the competitive environment in which Mintons operated was to change considerably in the final decades of the nineteenth century as patterns of demand changed and new competitors emerged, both at home and abroad. The firm’s business records make it possible to examine the effectiveness of its strategies in those years and to demonstrate that both structure and strategy were marked by considerable stability, even as performance declined.
The emergence of a strong company culture, informed by the firm’s history and its
proprietorial and managerial structure, will be explored first and an assessment made of its influence over business strategy (4). The Minton company culture believed in the pursuit of excellence and valued the skills necessary to its capture. Strategy was concentrated on the production of wares of the very highest quality selling at premium prices in both domestic
and foreign markets (5). Herbert Minton, son of the founder and in control of the firm from 1836 until his death in 1858, has been described as having a ‘driving ambition....to attain international recognition that the wares of Minton and Co. equalled those of the great continental ceramic houses’ (6). This ambition may be said to have been realized and the firm acquired the highest of reputations. Colin Minton Campbell wrote to his mother describing the impact made by the firm at the Great exhibition with obvious pride.
The reputation of Mintons is second to none, only Sevres is a remote contender, and that is a government
manufactory, grant aided annually to the tune of £12,000. Uncle (Herbert Minton) sought out and courted by all. He escorted the Royal Family and the Prince and Princess of Prussia through the building....and the Queen presented him to the Princess.... as the manufacturer of that beautiful desert service. (7)
The firm had acquired this privileged position by developing an appropriate resource base, and in particular by employing many talented artist/designers and decorators. Registration as a limited liability company in 1883 confirmed the central position of design personnel and policy in the management and strategies of the firm (8). The company culture was similarly enlightened in its attitudes to the employment and working conditions of the entire
workforce. The firm paid well, took the lead in sweeping away restrictive conditions of employment, earned the approval of the unions and avoided disputes (9). However, the workforce were expected to respond with loyalty and hard work, the family taking the lead in providing models of such virtues whilst also acting as a guarantee of the firm’s good name in the market place. The emphasis on artistic excellence and the good treatment of the work force had allowed the firm to move towards the development of a mixed resource base that combined skilled workers with some advanced mechanical techniques and lead to an output spanning both top-end and mid-range goods (10). As with many of its other features,
experiments in productive techniques had been established as an element of company culture by the activities of the proprietors prior to 1850(11).
However, any flexibility that appeared to have been built into the firm, allowing it to assimilate changes in both productive processes and the competitive environment, proved
limited and the trap of serving only a dwindling luxury market increasingly difficult to avoid (12). Mintons found that its strategies did not isolate it from deteriorating trading conditions in the last two decades of the century, which impacted as forcefully on Mintons as they did on any other firm in the Potteries. From 1887 until the end of the century the firm made continuous losses and in the early 1890s acute financial crisis made failure a very real possibility. The nature of these difficulties and their relationship to the firm’s structure, culture, and strategies will all be explored. Does it follow, though, that Mintons was wrong in ‘clinging, in a changing world, to methods and types of organization which had been formed in the days of her supremacy’ (13)? Certainly it may be argued that the company culture, and the strategies which it informed, were in part a cause of the firm’s problems but they also gave to the firm, its workforce and owners an impressive tenacity. Undoubtedly it was culture that made meaningful the ‘irrational’ behaviour of John Fitzherbert Campbell, favouring survival over profit maximization, without which collapse may well have occurred in 1894 (14). Thus, the influence of a company’s history cannot be characterized simply as ‘the restraining dead-hand of....past achievement’, instead, as Lloyd-Jones and Lewis have demonstrated of personal capitalism in the Sheffield metal and metal-making trades of this period, the ‘tenacity of this form of business organization suggests that it was not in its nature incapable of meeting the challenge of increased competition’ (15).
However, as Schein argues, it is the basis that cultures have in such stability which lends them the power to make groups cohere whilst also making them resistant to change. It is evolutionary environmental change which determines which quality is ascendant, the consensus created by culture tending to be ‘more dysfunctional in the later stages’ of the growth of an organization. It will be shown that in the 1880s and 1890s Mintons perhaps lacked a leadership able to recognize that ‘some of its assumptions were no longer valid’ (16). Thus, in comparison with the activities of the firm’s founder, the behaviour of Colin Minton Campbell and his son John Fitzherbert Campbell in the latter half of the century was more ‘managerial’ than ‘entrepreneurial’, seeking stability before growth (17). The third and fourth generations of the family failed Schein’s test of leadership, in which ‘leaders create and change cultures, while....managers live within them’ (18). More generally, the example of Mintons provides evidence that the ‘the transition from small to large, from entrepreneur-
dominated to manager-dominated enterprise’ characteristic of this period required neither the separation of ownership and control or organizational development (19). Profitability returned in 1902 and, despite a run of losses in the 1930s, the firm remained an independent family business until it was bought by the Doulton group in 1968. Throughout the twentieth century company culture displayed the same stability. A recent history of design and
production at Mintons over the last two hundred years, written by the company archivist and curator, begins by declaring that the firm has always pursued artistic excellence regardless of financial considerations (20).
Though Martin, Sitkin, and Boehm argue for a ‘more complex and constrained portrayal of a founder’s ability to impact the trajectory of a culture’s evolution’ the influence of founders cannot be simply dismissed (21). Thomas Minton, the firm’s founder, may be viewed as a Schumpeterian entrepreneur, aggressive, growth oriented and with the ‘drive and dynamism ....of the classical industrial revolution’, and it was he and his son Herbert who did most to shape the structure and direction of the business (22). The firm’s market orientation was based on his personal skills as an engraver. This background meant that Thomas Minton prioritized product over process, unlike the majority of manufacturers inculcated in the values of the workbench. Though he did not undertake a craft apprenticeship, as his father had done, it was commonly attested that Herbert too showed a keen appreciation of and involvement in design at the company (23). The firm’s commercial development was forged through a series of partnerships, though the family was careful to retain control.
Bom in Shrewsbury in 1765, Thomas Minton was apprenticed as an engraver at Thomas Turner’s Caughley China Works at Broseley. He moved to the Potteries in 1789 and worked as an engraver and designer at Bridge House in Stoke-upon-Trent, during which time he produced a number of popular patterns for Josiah Spode I. According to John Thomas it was upon becoming a master engraver in 1793 that Minton decided to begin manufacture himself and ‘like Spode.... who appointed a practical potter....to manage (his) pottery, Minton the engraver made Joseph Poulson the manager of his new factory’. Poulson had in fact previously been a manager at Spodes (24). Clearly Thomas had quickly and effectively integrated himself into the highly localized business networks of the district. Poulson was
made a partner in 1797 and shortly after William Pownall, a Liverpool merchant, also became a partner, the firm trading as Minton, Poulson and Pownall until 1809, by which time Poulson had died and Pownall retired. Minton’s sons Thomas Webb and Herbert entered the partnership in 1817, but Thomas Webb withdrew to enter the church in 1823 and Herbert also left, in 1828, and was not to return until his father’s death in 1836 (25). Herbert’s first partner, John Boyle, was also from outside the family, but this partnership was short-lived and during its dissolution in 1841, which was attended by considerable difficulties, Herbert showed his capacity for aggressive business techniques. Boyle noted in September 1841 that the relationship between the two men had deteriorated ‘to the extent of personal abuse’. Even Herbert’s nephew and successor, Colin Minton-Campbell, was moved to complain in 1852 that ‘our worthy uncle has been very difficult’ (26). Immediately after ending the partnership with Boyle Herbert formed another, with his wife’s nephew, Michael Daintry Hollins. His own nephew, Colin Minton-Campbell, entered the business in 1849. On Herbert’s death in 1858 Minton-Campbell and Hollins continued in partnership together until 1863, though again dissolution was not easily achieved, disputes as to the right to produce certain wares not being settled until the early 1870s or without recourse to the law (27).
Thus, across a series of partnerships spanning some sixty years the Minton family had proved itself determined to maintain direct personal control of a firm that had grown very considerably during the same period. The firm had, like others in the district, begun life in a small way, but a strong commitment to personal capitalism had not acted as a constraint on growth and the Potteries had proved itself ‘capable of producing large firms of national and international repute’ (28). Given this history it is no surprise that the commitment of the Minton-Campbell family to the firm did not diminish in the second half of the century. This continuing commitment was demonstrated in both the governance and the managerial style of the firm. No extensive managerial hierarchy was developed. Instead there emerged a small body of managers drawn from outside the family, each with a broadly defined functional role. An Address from the entire workforce to Colin Minton Campbell of November 1876 was headed by the names of four managers; Leon Arnoux, Art Director, George Leason,
manager at Stoke, P. Holdcroft, manager at Walbrook, and W. Hawley, manager at Great Portland St. (29). Moreover, Leason, who was apprenticed to Mintons at the age of 13 before becoming journeyman and then foreman, is evidence of managerial dynasticism, his father having played an important role in the firm in the 1830s and 40s (30). Such forms of managerial recruitment and training were certain to produce managers fully imbued with the company culture.
Governance was equally tightly controlled. The incorporation of the firm as a private limited liability company, styled Mintons Ltd., in September 1883 did not weaken family control and is further confirmation of the conclusion of Payne and others that the adoption of corporate status by British firms ‘initially did nothing to disrupt the familial nature of British business organization’ (30). The shareholders were; Colin Minton-Campbell, Thomas William Minton, Herbert Minton, Herbert Minton-Robinson, L. Arnoux, G. Leason and Alfred Reynolds, the last two described respectively as potters’ manager and manager of printing process (31). Very soon afterwards Leason was nominated a director of the company but the other managers did not follow him and the Board of Directors was composed almost entirely of family members. T.W. Minton, H. Minton and H. Minton-Robinson were all appointed as managing directors in September 1884, the latter, who had only entered the firm in the autumn of 1883, was made Company Secretary at the same time, a post he was to occupy until his death in 1923 (32).
This reliance upon family members to fill managerial posts and directorships, however, represented a potential rigidity. Given the absence of sons the succession of 1858 was handled smoothly, but the determination with which family control was maintained, both then and subsequently, offers evidence of the very great extent to which, as Casson suggests, the supply of entrepreneurs is ‘organized with reference to cultural subgroups’, in this case the family (33). In such patterns of recruitment the cultural affiliations of candidates (i.e. membership of the family) are at least as important as their attributes in determining selection and may lead to fixture problems. Bias can cause
considerable inertia....when a particular group begins to dominate a particular industry (or firm) favouritism in recruitment may make that group difficult to dislodge. This can be a serious difficulty if environmental change alters the role requirements, so that the culture is no longer appropriate given the different kinds of judgement now required. (34)
Similarly, Schein notes that ‘Once cultures exist they determine who will or will not be a leader’ (35). A strong company culture offers no guarantee that leaders able to recognize that some or all of the culture’s basic assumptions have become inappropriate will
necessarily emerge.
Comparisons serve to highlight the conservative style of governance at Mintons. Unlike the cases of Wills (1893), Pilkington (1894), or the re-registration of Courtaulds in 1904, where ‘growth was the spur’, neither the incorporation of Mintons in 1883, or re-registration in 1892, took place in a context of ‘sustained growth and the need to secure its financing’. Indeed the latter event is best understood as an example of crisis management (36). Instead, incorporation, taking place against a background of a stable resource and product base, minimal investment, and static or declining sales, must be seen as a symbolic act of consolidation (37).
As has been suggested the firm’s resource base displayed the same stability as its structure and governance in the latter half of the century (See Appendix D Table 1 for details of process innovations originating within the company in the second half of the nineteenth century). At the time of the Great Exhibition Minton, Hollins and Co., as the firm was then known, had a workforce of a little over 1,500 and in 1882 stood at 1,565 (38). Correlating the composition of the workforce of 1882 with an inventory of the firm’s fixtures completed for January 1884 demonstrates that the limited growth that had occurred had been extensive rather than intensive. Fifty percent of the workforce of 1882 were either artists, designers or decorators, some of the most highly paid manual occupations in the industry. Potters, those responsible for forming the wares, where mechanization was to have the most impact in reducing the labour costs in the industry, formed just 17.5% of the workforce (39). The
firm’s existing human resource balance meant that even full adoption of the most advanced techniques of the day would have had a limited impact on costs, but the evidence points to a cautious approach to mechanization within the firm.
The inventory of 1888 lists a total of 172 forming machines, comprised of a combination of whirlers, jiggers and throwing wheels. Jiggers, the most advanced of these machines,
numbered just 26, or 15% of the total. Even more significantly a very similar number, 27, of all types of machine were recorded as being steam powered (40). Moreover, this inventory did not capture the firm at the bottom of an investment cycle for it was taken four years after an auditors report of 1879 had noted that ‘The charge for Repairs and Additions to
Buildings and Machinery for the past few years has been exceptionally heavy’ (41). The accountants also noting that ‘we are informed by Mr. Leason that the works are now in excellent order and that a large saving may be expected under this head’ (42). Certainly significant investment in plant virtually ceased for some years after this. In no one year between 1883 and 1893 did expenditure on new machinery represent more than 1% of total expenditure, but neither did the anticipated savings materialize.
It will later be shown that an inability to control costs, particularly labour costs, was to dog the firm throughout the 1880s and 1890s and, as was true of also of structure and
governance, Mintons resource base was subject to some rigidities at this time. This rigidity was located in the value placed on quality by the company culture and in the reciprocity of employer/employee relations. Thus, much like high class Sheffield cutlers such as George Wostenholm and Sons, Mintons found any move down-market difficult and unappealing (43). When external pressure began to mount from the mid-1870s the firm did not exploit any potential for diversification it may have possessed but retreated instead to a reliance on its core values. Thus, the firm’s resource base, both physical and human, with its high degree of specificity to strategies congruent with the company culture, played a role in making the