THE STRUCTURE AND BEHAVIOR OF BRITISH LARGE FIRMS

本研究探讨了英国大型企业的结构和行为与其内部资本市场之间的关系。我们从一个假设开始，即企业的结构和行为由这些企业内部化的资源的性质决定。在英国公司的案例中，财务资源发挥了最重要的作用。大多数英国大型公司采用控股公司结构，这是控制这种财务资源的一种合适的组织形式。我们还能够区分出两种类型的控股公司：一种是由战后样本中典型的“市场失灵”形成的，另一种是从一开始就内部化了财务资源的战前样本。大多数英国公司都是为了股东的利益行事，这与美国的日本公司形成了鲜明的对比。

This research deals with the relationship between the structure and behavior of British large-scale firms and their internal capital markets. We started from a hypothesis that the structure and behavior of firms are determined by the nature of resources which these firms internalized. In the case of British firms, it has been the financial resources that played the most importnat role. Most of the large-scale British firms adopted holding company structure, which is an appropriate organisational form to control this financial resource.We were also able to distinguish two types of holding companies; one formed by the "market failure", which is typically found in the post-war samples,while the other, which internalized financial resources from the beginning, is found in the pre-war samples.Most British firms acted for the profit of their stock-holders, which is quite contrasting to their American of Japanese counterparts.