Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-6bb9c88b65-x9fsb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-23T07:36:07.482Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Gentlemen vs Players

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2025

Michael Aldous
Affiliation:
Queen's University Belfast
John D. Turner
Affiliation:
Queen's University Belfast
Get access

Summary

Viscount Victor Spencer was representative of the British social elites deeply entrenched in business at the beginning of the twentieth century. He was amongst the 41 per cent of CEOs who were peers of the realm. Like most of these peers, he did not have a background in the business world or industry. This chapter details why these aristocratic amateurs initially dominated corporate leadership roles but rapidly declined in number as social and political changes reduced the importance of the aristocracy and the economic environment was transformed by the technological and business innovations of the second industrial revolution. They were replaced by professional managers like Thomas Sutherland of the shipping company P&O, founder CEOs such as Thomas Lipton, and family CEOs such as Archibald Coats of the textile business J & P Coats. These CEOs developed extensive business experience as insiders within their companies, which allowed them to innovate the strategy and structure of their companies. Despite their decline, the gentleman amateurs performed no worse than these players.

Information

Type
Chapter
Information
The CEO
The Rise and Fall of Britain's Captains of Industry
, pp. 17 - 52
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge-org.demo.remotlog.com is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×