Abstract
IN an address on "The Consumer in Relation to Non-Competitive Industry", delivered at the fifty-second Oxford Management Conference of the British Institute of Management held at Scarborough on October 16, Mr. Herbert Morrison said that increasing use of economists is being made in the work of government ; but his address was chiefly concerned with the administrative policy pursued to protect the consumer in industries where full competition does not operate—a field which is not coterminous with that of public ownership. While under the competitive system the threat of withdrawal of custom could be a spur to efficiency, the corresponding safeguard with socialized industries should be their sensitiveness to public complaint. The consumer, he said, is entitled to demand that such industries avoid extravagant administration, attain a high degree of efficiency, pass to the consumer a substantial share of the results of higher productivity and have sufficient regard to the legitimate wishes of the consumer in matters of quality and variety.
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Control of Nationalized Industries. Nature 162, 807–808 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/162807e0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/162807e0