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IN our book Industry and Technical Progress' we gave an analysis of the relation between technical progressiveness and certain other characteristics of firms, which might be summed up by the title general quality. We concluded (p. I90) that 'technical progressiveness is related to the general quality of the firm; and attention to other aspects of its general quality for instance, to management efficiency or to salesmanship and market research helps to create the conditions for technical progress. In other words, the use of science is not an optional extra to be attached to the firm, but an expression of the whole attitude of the firm'. The purpose of this paper is to explain in greater detail our previous analysis, and to invite readers in industry to try their hands at making a similar analysis for their own firms, either for their own interest or (if they are willing to help us in this way) in order to increase our body of data. Although we present this article under our names, as authors of the book, the original work was to a considerable extent due to members of our research staff (Miss M. G. Hanna, Dr. D. L. Cardwell and Miss M. I. Burnikell), and in particular to Mr. W. P. Scott, whose statistical ingenuity was much in demand to deal with the difficulties of the data. It is not easy to say what 'degree of technical progressiveness' a firm has attained. There is no great difficulty in dividing firms into three classes:
Carter et al. (Sun,) studied this question.