First published in 1973, this title examines the development patterns of small businesses. It considers why people found firms; the factors that contribute to entrepreneurial success; problems of management succession and inheritance; the strengths and weaknesses of family firms; the reasons why small firms are taken over; and the social, economic and managerial context of their growth, decline, and revival. Based on a survey of sixty-four firms, each employing fewer than five hundred people, in engineering, hosiery, and knitwear, and on the records of 370 similar organisations, a striking gap in performance and management attitudes emerges as between dynamic, mostly founder-run firms and stagnant, mostly inherited ones. Where many books are either minutely specialised or highly abstract and over-generalised, Jonathan Boswell’s work is practical and diagnostic, probing the inner recesses of the small firm sector. With particular relevance to the difficulties faced by entrepreneurs in today’s economic environment, this title advances selective measures to deal with old firms and inheritance, and a wide range of policies to encourage new entrepreneurship.

First published in 1983, this study investigates and compares three leading firms in the British iron and steel industry between 1914 and 1939, analysing their strategies, boardroom politics, and their responses to the problems posed by the Great War and by the vicissitudes of the 1920s and ‘30s. Jonathan Boswell illuminates certain issues that are of perennial importance for students of business: rationality and ‘error’ in decision-making, ethics, centralisation versus decentralisation, and the question of cyclical phases. The central theme throughout is the pursuit of three partly conflicting objectives: growth, efficiency and social action. The trade-offs between these three pursuits are used to examine significant contrasts in corporate strategies and behaviour, including towards government and public opinion. Boswell’s rejection of economic determinism; his insistence that managerial influences fall into definable long-run patterns; and his theses on managerial specialisation and long-term policy biases confront fundamental issues for theories of the firm.

This book, first published in 1982, is a study of the processes that shape the reproduction of the entrepreneurial middle class. It identifies the major dynamics surrounding stages of business growth. More particularly, it focuses upon obstacles and cleavages inherent within the process of small-scale capital accumulation. This book is ideal for students of business and economics.

When this book was first published in 1991, political ideology had thrust small-firm issues to the forefront of attempts to revitalize the British economy. In the Thatcher years the emphasis had been on individual enterprise and initiative with the number of small firms increasing rapidly. This was reflected in the growth in the number of specialist studies analysis small-firm revivalism. Small Business and Society clarifies the issues and debates that surround the small business and its place in society. In particular, the complex nature of its social role is examined: on the one hand, the entrepreneur can be seen as the innovator exploiting free-market capitalism to strengthen the economy; on the other, employment conditions and industrial relations are said to suffer. Moreover, the growing importance of ‘green’ issues now brings into question the extent to which the small firm benefits the environment. This book will be of interest to students of business and sociology.

Small businessmen and entrepreneurs came firmly back in fashion when this book was first published in 1980. As the Western economies moved into recession, many governments, particularly Mrs Thatcher’s administration, looked to the entrepreneurial spirit of the small businessman to rejuvenate and revitalise Western society. Stripping away the political rhetoric, this book provides a serious social portrait of the small businessman in the economy at the time in which this book was written. Based upon extensive original research, the detailed analyses focus on the key issues in the small businessmen’s life. At a time when there was much argument about the motivation and will to work of Western society, this study of the traditional custodians of capitalism is particularly relevant. Above all it shows how the historical values of the small businessman have survived in the changed circumstances of the advanced economies.

The idea of the ‘enterprise culture’ has been much vaunted over the last few decades: the growth of self-employment and small business ownership has been an important feature of the restructuring of the British economy. Because it is a concept that is difficult to evaluate, controversial and politically sensitive, social scientists were slow to analyse it. Consequently, it had been caricatured and many questions about its impact on society and the economy had been left unanswered. This collection, which was first published in 1991, presents a critical analysis of the various manifestations of the enterprise culture. Drawing upon a range of research, it deals with a number of related topics. The result is a powerful analysis of the material and ideological role of the petty bourgeoisie in contemporary capitalism. Its multidisciplinary approach, which contributions from leading scholars in the field, makes this book of interest to anyone wanting to make sense of the socio-economic restructuring of Britain.

This study, first published in 1986, provides a systematic account of the processes and structure of class formation in the major advanced capitalist societies. The focus is on the organizational mechanisms of class cohesion and division, theoretically deriving from a neo-Marxian perspective. Chapters consider the organization and structure of the ‘corporate ruling class’, the middle class and the working class, and are brought together in an overarching analysis of the organization of class in relation to the state and the economy. This title will be of particular interest to students researching the impact of recession on societal structure and the processes of political class struggle, as well as those with a more general interest in the socio-economic theories of Marx, Engels and Weber.

Virtually every decision to produce, buy or sell is influenced by quality, yet until this book was first published in 1992, there had been very little attempt to produce a comprehensive and practical theory for this. Here, Peter Bowbrick brings together different traditions of quality analysis from economics, marketing economics and marketing itself to identify the limitations of the different traditions of quality economics and some approaches to its analysis. Beginning with a definition of the subject and the concepts involved, this comprehensive title will be of particular value to students of Economics, Marketing and Business Studies.

This book is a discussion of and an argument for alternatives to the present structure of production in the United States—alternatives that would change the control of capital and how it is used. First published 1980, Carnoy and Shearer discuss the economic problems facing the 1980s and argue for a strategy to transform capital from corporations to the public. A book that remains relevant in today’s political economic climate, this title is ideal for students of economics and politics, as well as general readers interested in past and present economic problems and potential solutions.