Edward Cadbury: An Egalitarian Employer and Supporter of Working Women’s Campaigns

Abstract

Kimberley studies the important employer, thinker and author Edward Cadbury, who played a key role in a well-established Quaker family firm in the early twentieth century, and whose Quaker values deeply imbued his management approach. Integrity, participation and quality were the cornerstones of Cadbury’s business philosophy, and became the foundation on which the family firm developed a reputation for fairness, equality and innovation. But his approach went beyond what might normally be expected of a progressive employer: to embrace active support for trade unions, collective bargaining and especially campaigns for better wages and working conditions for women. In this way, the mature expression of Edward Cadbury’s Quaker values suggests a set of relationships that might be better captured in the concept of a business ‘covenant’.