Management and the Free Standing Company – The New Zealand and Australia Land Company c. 1866 – 1900.

Tennent, Kevin D. (2008): Management and the Free Standing Company – The New Zealand and Australia Land Company c. 1866 – 1900. Unpublished.

Abstract

This paper is based on archival work carried out on the papers of the New Zealand and Australian Land Company Ltd., a Scottish free-standing company founded in Edinburgh in 1867. It explores the development of a hierarchical management system within the company, looking at how the company managed properties on the other side of the world from its Edinburgh headquarters. It concludes that the company was capable of building competitive advantage through its management system in a sustainable fashion, encouraging a positive economic outcome in the host countries.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Australia, New Zealand, Management, free-standing companies, principal-agent problems, competitive advantage
• Subjects: N - Economic History > N5 - Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment, and Extractive Industries > N57 - Africa; Oceania; N - Economic History > N8 - Micro-Business History > N87 - Africa; Oceania; N - Economic History > N9 - Regional and Urban History > N97 - Africa; Oceania

References

Belich, J., Paradise Reforged: A History of the New Zealanders from the 1880s to the Year 2000 (Honolulu, Hawaii, 2001).

Davidson, W. S., William Soltau Davidson, 1846 - 1924 (Edinburgh, UK, 1930).

Jackson, W. T., The Enterprising Scot: Investors in the American West after 1873 (Edinburgh, UK, 1968).

Jones, C. A., International Business in the Nineteenth Century: The Rise and Fall of a Cosmopolitan Bourgeoisie (Brighton, UK, 1987).

Spence, C. C., British Investments and the American Mining Frontier, 1860-1901 (New York City, 1958).

Wilkins, M. 'Defining a Firm: History and Theory', in P. Hertner, and Jones, C. ed., Multinationals: Theory and History, (Aldershot, 1986).

———. 'The Free-Standing Company, 1870 - 1914: An Important Type of British Direct Foreign Investment', Economic History Review series II XLI (1988), pp. 259 - 282.

Williscroft, C., ed., A Lasting Legacy - William Davidson 125 (Auckland, New Zealand, 2007).