Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Defence and the decline of UK mechanical engineering
T2 - The case of Vickers at Barrow
AU - Mort, Maggie
AU - Spinardi, Graham
PY - 2004/1/1
Y1 - 2004/1/1
N2 - This article asks whether the UK's defence technology base is a potential solution to industrial underachievement or whether it is perhaps at the heart of the problem. In the UK, firms seem often to have opted for defence as the best route to business success. This is often portrayed as the result of short-sighted management, but it is perhaps more analytically useful to consider the ways in which this comes about. Drawing on a wide range of sources, we focus on the production history of Vickers/VSEL at Barrow in Furness, Cumbria. Once a highly diverse engineering company, VSEL became almost entirely synonymous with shipbuilding, and the building of the Trident submarines. This level of defence dependence came about following a process of active marginalisation of non-defence work which created a monoculture within the company for the first time and in which the perceived status of civil engineering declined in relation to 'superior' defence requirements. The identification of the company's interests solely with the Trident programme required a period in which employment was driven up to unsustainable levels, followed by sharp reductions in, and impoverishment of, the skill mix in a previously diverse workforce.
AB - This article asks whether the UK's defence technology base is a potential solution to industrial underachievement or whether it is perhaps at the heart of the problem. In the UK, firms seem often to have opted for defence as the best route to business success. This is often portrayed as the result of short-sighted management, but it is perhaps more analytically useful to consider the ways in which this comes about. Drawing on a wide range of sources, we focus on the production history of Vickers/VSEL at Barrow in Furness, Cumbria. Once a highly diverse engineering company, VSEL became almost entirely synonymous with shipbuilding, and the building of the Trident submarines. This level of defence dependence came about following a process of active marginalisation of non-defence work which created a monoculture within the company for the first time and in which the perceived status of civil engineering declined in relation to 'superior' defence requirements. The identification of the company's interests solely with the Trident programme required a period in which employment was driven up to unsustainable levels, followed by sharp reductions in, and impoverishment of, the skill mix in a previously diverse workforce.
U2 - 10.1080/00076790412331270099
DO - 10.1080/00076790412331270099
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:0346934935
VL - 46
SP - 1
EP - 22
JO - Business History
JF - Business History
SN - 0007-6791
IS - 1
ER -