Quaker accountability regimes: the case of the Richardson family networks, 1840–1914

Abstract

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the development of the accountability ideals and practices of Quaker industrialists during the period 1840–1914.Design/methodology/approachThe research employs a case study approach and draws on the extensive archives of Quaker industrialists in the Richardson family networks, British Parliamentary Papers and the Religious Society of Friends together with relevant contemporary and current literature.FindingsFriends shed their position as Enemies of the State and obtained status and accountabilities undifferentiated from those of non-Quakers. The reciprocal influences of an increasingly complex business environment and radical changes in religious beliefs and practices combined to shift accountabilities from the Quaker Meeting House to newly established legal accountability mechanisms. Static Quaker organisation structures and accountability processes were ineffective in a rapidly changing world. Decision-making was susceptible to the domination of the large Richardson family networks in the Newcastle Meeting House. This research found no evidence of Quaker corporate social accountability through action in the Richardson family networks and it questions the validity of this concept. The motivations underlying Quakers’ personal philanthropy and social activism were multiple and complex, extending far beyond accountabilities driven by religious belief.Originality/valueThis research has originality and value as a study of continuity and change in Quaker accountability regimes during a period that encompassed fundamental changes in Quakerism and its orthopraxy, and their business, social and political environments.

The contribution of the Stephenson Company, engine manufacturers to the genesis of the British railway industry c.1823-1840

“…The Quakers can be regarded as a closed network because membership of the community conferred privileged access to information and resources and reduced risk by virtue of the members' belief that they were as accountable to God for their actions in business as for anything else. Hence miscreants faced the threat of denouncement in their meeting house, or even social exclusion in the worst cases, which apart from the stigma involved, would diminish their future business prospects (Boyce and Ville, 2002, pp.264-265;McLean et al, 2022).…”

“…With regard to the two main sources of benefit of social networks identified by Burt (2000, pp.349-353) as "affecting the flow of information", network closure and brokering across structural holes, the experience of the Stephenson Company spanned both. On the one hand, it became linked through the agency of two of the partners, Edward Pease and Thomas Richardson, with the closed Quaker network of business connections, where sanctions existed in terms of social exclusion for untrustworthy behaviour (McLean et al, 2022). On the other, it was also part of the network of mining and mechanical engineers in the North-east of England, which by this time had formed itself into a distinct profession.…”