![]() Part of this involved choosing the design of their notes and how they might represent their corporate character visually.Ĭonsiderable work has been undertaken about bank notes in relation to national identity (Blaazer Citation2002 Gilbert Citation1998 Gilbert and Helleiner Citation2012 Helleiner Citation2003 V. As new entities, in both organizational form and as business enterprises, it was vital for them to build a strong corporate identity in order to gain a foothold in the market. There was plenty that could be done outside of the legal arena in the way of building a corporate identity. In other words, legal rules only influenced the legal structure of the company and no more. 1 Yet, the organizations themselves were free to develop their identity. Legal restrictions were placed on these banks in order to prevent the use of limited liability. This article focuses on the new joint stock banks promoted in the nineteenth century after the 1826 Banking Act. While banks in this time period forged and developed their corporate identity through visual means, corporate personality was restricted by law (Lobban Citation1996 Frame Citation2015). The government’s ability to control the money supply has been an essential component in the debate about ways to stimulate economic growth. The Bank of England was thus positioned at the center of England’s banking system as the only bank that controlled fluctuations in currency. By the start of the twentieth century a merger movement had taken place during which commercial banks relinquished their note issue so that only one bank of issue was left: the Bank of England. They operated alongside private banks and both were able to issue their own notes. Between 18 (when legislation curtailed bank creations and note issuing), 138 joint stock banks were established. Banks owned by shareholders – joint stock banks – emerged in England after 1826, although they were not permitted to adopt limited liability until 1858. The nineteenth century was of particular importance within this debate, as it was in this century that the beginnings of the modern banking system can be seen. There has been – and still is – considerable debate among those in these fields about whether the ability to issue currency should be restricted by law, and its relationship to economic and monetary policy (Fetter Citation1965 White Citation1996 Dowd Citation1996). The aim to link banking and finance to questions of organizational form and regulation is by no means new within financial history.īank notes, financial instruments and the specie have traditionally been a subject of interest for those studying the history of banking, political economy and monetary policy. These visualizations gave rise to notions of the organization and its character within the community. At this stage in history, banks issued promissory notes at will and images on them encapsulated an organization’s identity. It focuses on the English financial sector and analyzes the bank notes produced by commercial banks in the early nineteenth century. This article brings together legal doctrine with corporate visual identity in order to strengthen those conceptual ties. The three concepts have been well developed in their respective fields, yet they remain separate, despite renewed attempts to integrate law with management history (Wilson Citation2014 Burton, Kavanagh, and Brigham Citation2019). It relates corporate identity to visual identity and corporate law, more specifically, the doctrine of a separate legal personality. This article furthers the theoretical discussion around corporate identity, which has thus far been a porous concept. Black Citation1996, Citation2000, Citation2003 Gough Citation2004 Davison Citation2009). Images, symbols and imagery in the analysis of organizations have been considered elsewhere (I. ![]() ![]() With a growing middle-class and low (but rising) levels of literacy (Stone Citation1969 Sanderson Citation1995), visual means were simple and effective methods of disseminating a set of ideas. Artifacts and images can be utilized by companies as useful means to convey ideas (Ames Citation1980). With this empirical discussion, we then place the analysis into the wider theoretical literature about corporate identity and legal personality. In the nineteenth century, images were a useful mechanism for communicating a diverse set of ideas (Hall Citation2008), although we consider these bank notes in the way they relate to the bank’s owners, its customers and the business entity, more generally. To reveal how banks used notes to communicate ideas about their organization and role, we place these notes within the wider socio-economic context of the time. We study the ways that joint stock banks used design on their notes to signal their corporate identity.
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