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Jaguar cars, 1980 to 1990 : Illusion, delusion, or lost opportunity?

Williams, Keith Cledwyn 2009. Jaguar cars, 1980 to 1990 : Illusion, delusion, or lost opportunity? PhD Thesis, Cardiff University.

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Abstract

The Jaguar motor company in the 1980s under the leadership of John Egan attained an iconic status as a modem, revitalised company, being hailed as one of the great success stories of the decade. This view portrayed Jaguar as having resolved the quality and industrial relations problems that had developed during the period of the BL stewardship from 1968 to 1980, and which in consequence achieved record levels of sales volumes, and profits, before declining again after 1986. This thesis presents a revisionist view of the problems suffered by Jaguar during the 1980s, and the reasons why the company under the Egan management failed to resolve these. Building on the previous work of Lewchuk and Whisler it examines Jaguar's deficiencies in management, industrial relations, engineering, production, product quality, and marketing. Moreover, it reveals how these deficiencies were masked by a clever public relations programme by Jaguar which concealed both its failure to address many of its inherited problems, and the reasons for its decline after the launch of the new saloon car in 1986. There have been no academic works that have focused on Jaguar, and little has been written about Jaguar's quality problems, and the part played by its inadequate engineering function, under Egan. This thesis, therefore, might be seen as filling an obvious gap in the historiography of the British motor industry in general, and Jaguar in particular. The research to a large extent has been an exercise in oral history. However, the information obtained from interviews with an elite group of former executives of Ford or Jaguar, and other informed individuals, has been triangulated with published and unpublished primary sources such as Jaguar's Reports and Accounts, press releases, newspaper reports and articles, and official statistics.

Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
Status: Unpublished
Schools: Business (Including Economics)
ISBN: 9781303189999
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 30 March 2016
Last Modified: 10 Oct 2014 14:53
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/55861

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