Plant Size and Efficiency in the Steel Industry: an International Comparison

For convenience we refer to West Germany as Germany and the United States of America as America throughout.

A.J. Cockerill with A. Silberston , The Steel Industry, Cambridge University Press, 1974.

See A.H. Leckie and A.J. Morris , 'Effects of plant and works scale on costs in the iron and steel industry', Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute, vol. 206, May 1968, pp. 442-52.

Including Krupp Stahl at Duisburg-Rheinhausen, Mannesmann Hüttenwerke at Duisburg-Huckingen and the huge Thyssen complex in North Duisburg.

34 per cent in 1979, compared with 25 per cent in America and 14 per cent in Germany.

Including Manchester Steel at Beswick, Manchester and Bidston, Merseyside and Sheerness Steel in Kent.

See Alan Pike , 'Special steels industry: a doomsday message', Financial Times, 5 August, 1981.

George McManus, 'American Steel doesn't lag in technology ... just in capital', Iron Age, 11 September 1978.

See Jonathan Aylen , 'Innovation in the British Steel Industry', in Technical Innovation and British Economic Performance, (ed.) K. Pavitt , London: Macmillan, 1980, chapter 12.

See Jonathan Aylen , 'Memorandum on the British Steel Corporation and Technical Change', in First Report from the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries, Session 1977-8, The British Steel Corporation, volume III, London: HMSO, 1978, appendix 23.

See J.K. Stone , 'Will Government aid cure steel industry woes?', Steel Times, December 1979, pp. 73-4.

Productivity Team on Iron and Steel (op. cit.).

See Gerhard Meinshausen , 'Konzentration und Ausbau der Roheisen-und Rohstahlerzeugung der Fried. Krupp Hüttenwerke', Stahl und Eisen, vol. 97, 1977, no. 3, 10 February, pp. 109-17.

Department of Trade and Industry , Steel: British Steel Corporation: Ten Year Development Strategy, Cmnd 5226 , London: HMSO, 1973.

Iron and Steel Sector Working Party, Report from the Appleby-Frodingham Study Team and Report of the Clydebridge Study Team, London: National Economic Development Office, 1979.

The Sidmar/Llanwern Manning Report (September 1975) is a confidential internal document of the British Steel Corporation. It was the subject of a BBC Television Panorama programme the following year. After the report was completed, the Sidmar workforce went on strike for six weeks in spring 1976. A wit at the British Steel Corporation's Head Office is said to have telexed Llanwern: 'Sidmar on strike—they heard about your manning levels'.

See Peter Bowen , Social Control in Industrial Organisations: Industrial Relations and Industrial Sociology, A Strategic and Occupational Study of British Steelmaking, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976; E. Owen Smith , Productivity Bargaining: A Case Study in the Steel Industry, London : Pan, 1971, and a classic study by W.H. Scott , J.A. Banks , A.H. Halsey and T. Lupton , Technical Change and Industrial Relations , Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1956.

See P.W. Musgrave , Technical Change, the Labour Force and Education: A Study of the British and German Iron and Steel Industries 1860-1964, Oxford: Pergamon, 1967, and C. Erickson , British Industrialists: Steel and Hosiery, 1850-1950, Cambridge University Press, 1959.