Papers presented by Ian G. Jones since 2019

2024 Providence, Rhode Island

"‘A passing of the guard’? Governance and strategy in the ‘Big Four’ British clearing banks, 1973-2005"

Abstract:

Since the mid-1970s, British banking has undergone significant industry-wide changes, including: enhanced regulation; the activities banks could undertake; ownership of major firms; and strategies they followed (Michie 2001; Collins 1988; Howcroft 2005). To examine these topics, we compiled a unique database of the directors of the Big Four banks (Barclays, Lloyds, NatWest, and Midland, later HSBC) at five-year intervals. This database contains information on their roles within the bank, their educational and professional backgrounds, as well as tangential information such as familial links to the founders of the banks and geographical origins. Following Bosboom et. al. (2019), we compare these data with secondary sources, including official histories of the banks, to track the educational background of directors and their industry experience over time to assess the development and effectiveness of ‘board capital.’ We particularly examine knowledge brought by directors as a key resource of the firm and plot this analysis against key events for the industry, such as the Big Bang deregulation of the London Stock Exchange in 1986, and legislation aiming to improve corporate governance in British business, such as the 1992 Cadbury Report. Preliminary findings suggest that benefits from forming smaller bank boards are more assumed than demonstrated. While the boards of the Big Four shrunk in the 1990s, this appears to be at the expense of non-executive directors who were not career bankers. Instead, evidence shows that the remaining directors came from similar educational or industrial backgrounds to earlier boards, with some of the banks having retained the same directors from 1980 to at least 1995. The full paper will interrogate the concept of ‘board capital’ within the banking industry, as well as exploring how the changes in board membership influenced the banks’ attempts to deal with an increasingly competitive marketplace.

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2024 Providence, Rhode Island

"“Having been a slave owner and much dissatisfied in being so”: A microhistory of David Barclay and the sale of the Unity Valley Penn"

Abstract:

In 1787 David Barclay wrote a letter to his son-in-law Richard Gurney, the husband of his only surviving daughter. Barclay’s letter discusses personal and business matters including his efforts to sell the Unity Valley Penn, an estate in Jamaica that he and his brother had taken ownership of due to a debt. Included with the Penn were 32 enslaved people, all of whom Barclay planned to manumise. In a series of letters between 1790 and 1795, Barclay and John Ashely, his agent in the United States, discussed Barclay’s plan for freeing the slaves. Additionally, a pamphlet published in 1801 by Barclay shows us his conclusions from the experience. While we know that many Quakers were involved in the abolition movement in Great Britain and carried their religious ethics into their business activities, we also know that not all Quakers unified their religious ethics with their professional business. This paper will take a microhistory approach to analyse what allowed David Barclay to act in a way that accorded with his religious ethics and potentially why others choose not to or were not able to. The paper will look at what forces were acting so shape, enable and prevent Barclay from enacting his wishes, and will argue that while Barclay may not have held the most progressive views amongst the abolition movement, nor pursued his goals with the utmost vigour, this instance can still act as an example for modern organisations when contemplating their corporate ethics. Barclays did not allow a search for a perfect solution to prevent him from acting, did not allow long term horizons to prevent short term actions, did not accept that systemic challenges that minimised his impact were a valid reason not to free his slaves, and accepted that while his actions in his personal and professional life may have only a small impact, they were just as important as his efforts to challenge wider systemic problems through his involvement in abolitionism.

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