Testing a Framework of the Organization of Small Firms

Studies of small firms tend to assume either that models derived from large firms can be applied directly or that small firms are uniformly distinct from large ones. A recent framework, based mainly on low-wage family-owned firms, has identified an analytical space to identify different types of small firm.This article tests out that framework in a different context: four high-tech and non-family-owned firms. The framework identified market conditions and strategic choice as key measures, and was useful in capturing practice, though it also needed further refinement. Key substantive implications were: apparently similar firms in fact behaved differently, for reasons to do with their market situations and the choices they made; and the firms displayed tensions between `modern' business strategies and `traditional' and informal employment practices, tensions that the framework helps to capture.