ABSTRACT
In terms of analysing long-run business performance, the changing relationship between culture and business has remained an important theme in historical and social science research. 1 Increasingly culture has been seen as an economic asset which not only influenced economic performance by reducing transaction costs and improving monitoring and supervisory systems, but also promoted technological innovation by facilitating the transfer of information and by creating a shared culture which helped to minimize risk. 2 The establishment of a common business culture based on shared aspirations and interpersonal contacts was a key ingredient in determining the operational framework of individual firms; shared values and aspirations were important factors in structuring business relations; and individual firms operated within an extended network of favour and obligation. The development of new institutional economics has highlighted the importance of networks in resolving problems of agency and asymmetric information, while business historians have helped to reveal the extent to which transaction costs could be reduced by a common business culture based on goodwill, regard, mutual aspirations and shared attitudes. Economic relations were often influenced by social interaction at a time when networks were of critical importance in 2determining commercial survival and the continued viability of individual firms was frequently dependent on business networks underpinned by shared values and common beliefs. However, the creation of a responsive business environment in the course of the nineteenth century was also a result of a complex development process which involved elite circulation and the creation of cultural, as well as economic and political power. 3 Culture was increasingly defined as a distinct sphere and its ownership, whether in metropolitan centres or provincial towns, was shaped by the leaders of business and professional groups which contributed to the ‘new urban collectivism’ in Britain and elsewhere between 1780 and 1820 and were responsible for the growing emphasis on the importance of civic culture and identity from the mid nineteenth century onwards. 4
