Excellence without competition. The German Telephone Network, 1919-1939

H. Schröter

Competition and Regulation in Network Industries, 2008, vol. 9, issue 4, 393-409

Abstract: Today excellence and the lack of competition seem to be contradictory, but this contribution provides one example of it. After a brief tour d'horizon, placing the German telephone network in the interwar period (our example) in its context, the reasons for its excellence are explained. For this Thomas Hughes's theory of large technical system is improved by two more parameters, policy and the legal framework. Our evaluation shows excellence was achieved through several factors acting simultaneously. One was the self-understanding of the employees to provide the best possible service. Their commitment was based on a feeling of representing a social and technical elite, which entailed obligations. A second factor was the kind of regulation the Reichspost had to respond to. It allowed the system to operate fairly like a private enterprise, applying, for instance a PPP as an additional source of quantitative and qualitative growth. A third factor was a close cooperation between the telephone network and private industry.

Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:sen:journl:v:9:i:4:y:2008:p:393-409

Access Statistics for this article

Competition and Regulation in Network Industries is currently edited by Hans Kluwer

More articles in Competition and Regulation in Network Industries from Intersentia
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Petra Van den Bempt ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).