Small Firms, Large Concerns: The Development of Small Business in Comparative Perspective

Economic stagnation in the 1970s heavily influenced public perception of small business in the industrialized world. Suddenly, small businesses were seen as the dynamic creator of new jobs, as a source of new technology, as a flexible mode of organization able to outmanoeuvre larger firms, and as an important key to community revitalization. Because of its inherent diversity and complexity, however, small business does not easily lend itself to traditional quantitative consideration, and relatively scant scholarly attention has been paid either to the role of small business in the wider economy or to potentially valuable international comparison. In Small Firms, Large Concerns, G-7 researchers and scholars follow the process of small business development in North America, Europe, and Japan. They examine economic growth and social stability; the links between small and big business; and the resilience and vulnerability of small business management. Fuji Business History series General Editor: Professor Akira Kudo, Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo Series Adviser: Professor Mark Mason, Yale University This is the third volume in the collaboration between OUP and the Business History Society of Japan to publish the `Fuji Conference Series' under the general editorship of Professor Akira Kudo. The series itself has been established for more than twenty years and is a major international forum for scholars from Asia, Europe, and North America. Books in the series were formerly published by the University of Tokyo Press.