The Rise of Specialist Firms in Spanish Shipping and Their Strategies of Growth, 1860 to 1930

Jesús Ma Valdaliso

Business History Review, 2000, vol. 74, issue 2, 267-300

Abstract: Spanish shipping firms relied on various strategies to direct the growth of their industry from 1860 to 1930. The diffusion of specialist shipowners during the second half of the nineteenth century was the result of both an increasing demand for maritime transport and a heavy rise in capital requirements owing to improvements in technology. During the first third of the twentieth century, some of these specialized firms became large companies through internal growth and/or horizontal combination. They achieved their gains without resorting to formal vertical integration, choosing instead to build social networks with other shipowners based on trust and loyalty. This approach allowed them to create intermediate arrangements, thereby diminishing transaction costs. When strategies of formal vertical integration were adopted, they primarily involved activities similar to shipping, such as ship brokering, consignment, stevedoring, and other maritime services. To document these trends, this article analyzes the organizational structure of Spain's twenty largest shipping concerns.

Date: 2000
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:buhirw:v:74:y:2000:i:02:p:267-300_07

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Business History Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().