Management in the early days of the Irish Free State: Bennetts of Ballinacurra

Gibney Desmond () and Quinn Martin
Additional contact information
Gibney Desmond: National College of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland
Quinn Martin: National College of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland

The Irish Journal of Management, 2018, vol. 37, issue 1, 35-50

Abstract: This study details the management practices of a malting business called Bennetts of Ballinacurra (Bennetts), from approximately 1920s to the mid-1930s, a period when the Irish Free State was in its infancy. There is little extant literature on the management practices of Irish businesses of the time. Archival records, containing the company’s books, records and correspondence, were our primary source. Our findings revealed a relatively sophisticated management information system for which its merchant background and close connections to Arthur Guinness & Sons Ltd. (Guinness) were a potential explanatory factor. In addition, despite the business being small, the study revealed how management coped with issues such as business structure and industrial relations in a time of great political and economic change. There is scope for future research to utilise the archives of Bennetts, as well as other archives identified in our study.

Keywords: management practice; Irish Free State; Guinness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2478/ijm-2018-0004 (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:vrs:irjman:v:37:y:2018:i:1:p:35-50:n:1004

DOI: 10.2478/ijm-2018-0004

Access Statistics for this article

The Irish Journal of Management is currently edited by Edel Conway and Jonathan Lavelle

More articles in The Irish Journal of Management from Sciendo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().