The technological backwardness of the British cotton industry in the first six decades of this century was due primarily to the structure of industrial organization, characterized by intense competition and specialization, that had developed in the nineteenth century when the industry had no serious international competitors. But with the rise of corporate economies, particularly in Japan and the United States, this structure of industrial organization rendered British cotton managers powerless to create the corporate structures required to meet this challenge. Britain's decline was due to the failure of its managers to create conditions for new profitable opportunities by altering the constraints that they faced.