The emergence of a corporate structure in the Williams Lake district lumber industry, 1947-1956
Date
1986
Authors
McRoberts, Mary Lillian
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Abstract
Between 1947 and 1956 the Williams Lake District lumber industry developed from a minor seasonal economic activity into a full-time industrial sector of great importance to the Cariboo region of British Columbia's Central Interior. The local sector is an excellent example of the kind of economic expansion that was occurring in the provincial forest industry at that time. This thesis analyzes the entrepreneurial strategies which provided the foundations of the district industry and the quasi-corporate structure that arose as a result of those strategies.
Local, national, and international forces combined to make the lumber industry one of the most volatile in the North American economy. The mutually beneficial structure that arose informally among district lumbermen served to counteract adverse market conditions. The quasi-corporate form of business had the salient characteristics of the hierarchical, administratively coordinated, functionally diversified production and distribution structure which Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. has argued is the mature Multidivisional form of enterprise. While Chandler argues that modern corporate business formed in capital-intensive industry as a response to technological change, the Multidivisional structure emerged informally in the labour-intensive Williams Lake District industry to buffer the effects of volatile market forces.
The British Columbia government, as the monopolist timber resource owner, was the one detrimental influence that the local production and distribution system could not ameliorate. Despite a strongly-voiced commitment to sustained-yield management in the interest of community stability and development, the government's Forest Service forced short-sighted and inappropriate timber management and allocation policies on the local sector which seriously undermined efficient industrial organization. This thesis concludes that the British Columbia government seriously hindered the economic development process in the district lumber industry, and suggests that this case study may serve to explain why the provincial government's efforts to induce industrialization in the Interior region have been largely unsuccessful.