Andrew C. Godley

2022 Mexico City

Abstract: Although paradox studies has been influential in recent work in management and organization studies, it has not been a core theme business history. Paradoxes are situational and contingent, suggesting the value of historical methodologies for understanding why some strategic contexts are more prone to paradox than others. Agrifood standards provide a particularly rich context for exploring the historical development of strategic paradoxes. Agrifood standards—for quality, safety, and socio-ecological sustainability—are exemplars of the sorts of “grand challenges” to which paradox studies are particularly well suited, as they are products of complex multistakeholder initiatives that seek to combine both market and social goals. Quality and food safety standards were first introduced to mass markets in the early twentieth century to smooth market transactions. Standards reduced market uncertainties by establishing clear (and increasingly, government-mandated) standards to minimize costly debates over pricing. By the end of the twentieth century, new non-governmental forms of voluntary, private standards (e.g., GlobalGAP, Sedex, Fairtrade) increasingly structured the agrifood marketplace, creating paradoxical tensions between competitive and collaborative strategies within the industry. Sustainability standards such as Fairtrade or GlobalGAP certification, for instance, produce irresolvable, illogical, and persistent tensions between farmers, food processors, retailers, and consumers. Various stakeholders often perceive the standards as lacking in credibility, as contradictory definitions of “quality,” “fairness,” and “sustainability” are often fundamentally irreconcilable. Our paper will draw on a range of primary and secondary sources to comparatively explore three case studies in agrifood standards implementation: government-enforced fresh fruit and vegetable standards in the 1920s United States, private industry-led poultry standards in 1960s Great Britain, and global multistakeholder sustainability standards under GlobalGAP in the 1990s-2000s.

2024 Providence, Rhode Island

Abstract: Despite its growing significance, there has to date been no business history research on the emergence of alternative protein technologies. The pioneer organisation was a British company called Marlow Foods, which created the world’s first mycoprotein product under the Quorn brand name. This article explores the emergence and development of mycoprotein as a technology between 1965 and 2001. This case study contributes to the rapidly growing business history literature on green (or sustainable) entrepreneurship and specifically green entrepreneurship in the food sector. Marlow Foods was itself a spin-out from two large corporations, Rank Hovis MacDougall (RHM) and ICI. Mycoprotein originated from an idea from the Chairman of RHM, Lord Rank, in 1965. This was inspired by his sense of philanthropy. Rank was a committed but unorthodox Christian and he brought these qualities into his desire to create an alternative protein source at a time when there was widespread concern about the forecast ‘Protein Famine’, a shortfall in protein for a growing global population. Despite the strong commitment to developing this sustainable source of protein for global consumption, and despite the resource made available from the parent companies for its development, the first Mycoprotein products were not made available until 1985, and Marlow Foods remained loss-making until the late 1990s. The case study supports two of the broad premises in the existing literature, that green innovation typically takes longer than non-green and that green entrepreneurs are typically values- not profit-driven. The paper then explores these premises and their consequences, which could be internally problematic. Using the case of Marlow Foods and the Quorn brand, the paper highlights the importance to business historians in understanding continuity gaps in the emergence of green entrepreneurship in food.

2026 London

Abstract: The impact of supermarkets upon the everyday life of twenty-first century Britain is a subject that has attracted a good deal of attention from academic and business commentators. But the historical trajectory by which ‘the Big Four’ (Tescos, Sainsburys, Asda, and Morrisons) achieved their dominance has been virtually ignored. The paper addresses this gap in the literature by exploring the process of how supermarket formats were adopted in postwar British food retailing. It draws primarily on the experience of Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd. Sainsbury’s was particularly important because by the early 1970s it had become the most successful exponent of supermarket trading in the United Kingdom and its format was becoming widely copied. The company drew on its long-standing reputation as a retailer of fresh meat and provisions to evolve a store format which, unlike its competitors, was capable of generating the profitable ‘one-stop’ shopping habits which underpin supermarket retailing today. It examines the company’s growing sophistication in the measurement of the productivity and profitability of its sales space to evolve a store format which, ultimately, became the model for the industry as a whole. It shows that the process of experimentation which accompanied this innovation to have been drawn out and costly, and to have relied on atypically high levels of labour input. The paper contrasts Sainsbury’s strategy of continuous experimentation and relatively slow, organic growth with competitors’ strategies, which can be related to the company’s trading practices, to the management style of the Sainsbury family, and to its brand identity.