WHAT IS STRATEGY? The case of retail finance and English Building Societies
Manuel Hensmans
No 11-049, Working Papers CEB from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles
Abstract:
Strategy is the entrepreneurial quest to gain a sustainable competitive advantage. Firms’ dependency on States during systemic economic crises underscores the need to redefine “sustainable”. At periodic intervals, States have to tackle the democratic deficits that spill over from market failures. States hereby support those entrepreneurs that propose democratic solutions most sustainable from the viewpoint of power holders. State support changes the long-term structure of competitive advantage. Accordingly, I redefine strategy as the quest to provide State-sanctioned entrepreneurial responses to democratic deficits. Drawing on historical evidence of English building societies, I demonstrate how entrepreneurial responses that befit State power holders most in face of democratic grievances, are structurally advantaged, be it through fiscal, regulatory or political means. A combination of strategically and fortuitously accumulated State support allowed building societies to leave behind other members of the friendly society movement during the period 1875-1945, only to reproduce this feat with clearing banks in the 1960s and 1970s. I analyse how building societies’ competitive advantage foundered as they failed to adapt to the changing geopolitical framework of British State sanction.
Pages: 44 p.
Date: 2011-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Published by:
Downloads: (external link)
https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/101475/1/wp11049.pdf wp11049 (application/pdf)
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:sol:wpaper:2013/101475
Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://hdl.handle.ne ... lb.ac.be:2013/101475
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in Working Papers CEB from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Benoit Pauwels ().