Jonathan Boswell – författare

This book shows how economics can be used to clarify and stimulate thinking about organisations and their decision problems. It is mainly designed for university students of economics, management and business studies and of public and social administration. But its clear and lively exposition will have a wider appeal.

The author introduces economic controversies on organisational power, exchange and self-interest, generosity and public spirit. He outlines many practical uses of such concepts as marginalism, opportunity cost, time preference and risk, scale economies and diseconomies, market power, public goods and externalities. He applies economics to business planning and budgeting problems and also to the problems of social enterprises in obtaining resources through charges and grants and in allocating these resources ‘efficiently’ and ‘fairly’.

A distinctive feature of the book is that it analyses problems in the wide context of business, public and voluntary organisations. Unlike many conventional texts it is not highly abstract, technical or descriptive. Drawing on his extensive experience, the author provides many real-life and typical case studies to highlight his central theme: the fruitful interaction between abiding economic ideas and contemporary organisational problems.

This book shows how economics can be used to clarify and stimulate thinking about organisations and their decision problems. It is mainly designed for university students of economics, management and business studies and of public and social administration. But its clear and lively exposition will have a wider appeal.

The author introduces economic controversies on organisational power, exchange and self-interest, generosity and public spirit. He outlines many practical uses of such concepts as marginalism, opportunity cost, time preference and risk, scale economies and diseconomies, market power, public goods and externalities. He applies economics to business planning and budgeting problems and also to the problems of social enterprises in obtaining resources through charges and grants and in allocating these resources ‘efficiently’ and ‘fairly’.

A distinctive feature of the book is that it analyses problems in the wide context of business, public and voluntary organisations. Unlike many conventional texts it is not highly abstract, technical or descriptive. Drawing on his extensive experience, the author provides many real-life and typical case studies to highlight his central theme: the fruitful interaction between abiding economic ideas and contemporary organisational problems.

First published in 1983, this study investigates and compares three leading firms in the British iron and steel industry between 1914 and 1939, analysing their strategies, boardroom politics, and their responses to the problems posed by the Great War and by the vicissitudes of the 1920s and ‘30s. Jonathan Boswell illuminates certain issues that are of perennial importance for students of business: rationality and ‘error’ in decision-making, ethics, centralisation versus decentralisation, and the question of cyclical phases. The central theme throughout is the pursuit of three partly conflicting objectives: growth, efficiency and social action. The trade-offs between these three pursuits are used to examine significant contrasts in corporate strategies and behaviour, including towards government and public opinion.

Boswell’s rejection of economic determinism; his insistence that managerial influences fall into definable long-run patterns; and his theses on managerial specialisation and long-term policy biases confront fundamental issues for theories of the firm.

First published in 1983, this study investigates and compares three leading firms in the British iron and steel industry between 1914 and 1939, analysing their strategies, boardroom politics, and their responses to the problems posed by the Great War and by the vicissitudes of the 1920s and ‘30s. Jonathan Boswell illuminates certain issues that are of perennial importance for students of business: rationality and ‘error’ in decision-making, ethics, centralisation versus decentralisation, and the question of cyclical phases. The central theme throughout is the pursuit of three partly conflicting objectives: growth, efficiency and social action. The trade-offs between these three pursuits are used to examine significant contrasts in corporate strategies and behaviour, including towards government and public opinion.

Boswell’s rejection of economic determinism; his insistence that managerial influences fall into definable long-run patterns; and his theses on managerial specialisation and long-term policy biases confront fundamental issues for theories of the firm.

First published in 1973, this title examines the development patterns of small businesses. It considers why people found firms; the factors that contribute to entrepreneurial success; problems of management succession and inheritance; the strengths and weaknesses of family firms; the reasons why small firms are taken over; and the social, economic and managerial context of their growth, decline, and revival. Based on a survey of sixty-four firms, each employing fewer than five hundred people, in engineering, hosiery, and knitwear, and on the records of 370 similar organisations, a striking gap in performance and management attitudes emerges as between dynamic, mostly founder-run firms and stagnant, mostly inherited ones.

Where many books are either minutely specialised or highly abstract and over-generalised, Jonathan Boswell’s work is practical and diagnostic, probing the inner recesses of the small firm sector. With particular relevance to the difficulties faced by entrepreneurs in today’s economic environment, this title advances selective measures to deal with old firms and inheritance, and a wide range of policies to encourage new entrepreneurship.