The State in Business: 1945 to the Mid-1980's (Modern economy & society) - Hardcover

With the spate of privatizations since 1980, British nationalization has become a phase of political and business history with a defined beginning and ending. This book is an examination of this phase as a whole. It provides a summary of the changes in legislation and discusses the ambiguities and fluctuations of the demands which governments made of nationalized undertakings. The author also looks at the availability of resources (including methods of finance), the problems of organization, and the uneasy balance between managerial independence and political interference. This enables the performance of the nationalized sector, in terms of profitability, efficiency and general contribution to the national economy, to be seen in perspective. The book concentrates on themes common to the whole nationalized sector but illustrates them abundantly from the individual industries and includes a consideration of the business performance of each of the main nationalized industries. The author draws conclusions which suggest that neither the nationalizers nor their critics have found the answers to questions of monopoly, efficiency, and accountability that are still with us.