Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Manufacturing employment change in Northern England 1965–78: the role of small businesses
- 3 New firms and rural industrialization in East Anglia
- 4 Spatial variations in new firm formation in the United Kingdom: comparative evidence from Merseyside, Greater Manchester and South Hampshire
- 5 An industrial and spatial analysis of new firm formation in Ireland
- 6 Innovation and regional growth in small high technology firms: evidence from Britain and the USA
- 7 Regional variations in capital structure of new small businesses: the Wisconsin case
- 8 The world of small business: turbulence and survival
- 9 The implications for policy
- Index
1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Manufacturing employment change in Northern England 1965–78: the role of small businesses
- 3 New firms and rural industrialization in East Anglia
- 4 Spatial variations in new firm formation in the United Kingdom: comparative evidence from Merseyside, Greater Manchester and South Hampshire
- 5 An industrial and spatial analysis of new firm formation in Ireland
- 6 Innovation and regional growth in small high technology firms: evidence from Britain and the USA
- 7 Regional variations in capital structure of new small businesses: the Wisconsin case
- 8 The world of small business: turbulence and survival
- 9 The implications for policy
- Index
Summary
A number of different responses have been made by governments to the recession which has gripped the economies of many of the world's leading industrialised countries since the mid-1970s. Faced with both a declining total market and increased competition from LDCs most governments have offered financial and non-financial incentives for manufacturing industry to become more price competitive. Government policies have also stressed the importance of both moving into technologically more sophisticated products and of using more efficient production methods (‘automate or liquidate’). The increased use of robots in manufacturing and the relatively slow rates of increase in labour productivity within the service sector have encouraged the belief that an increasing proportion of new employment will be created in services, based upon high incomes but low manning levels in manufacturing.
Nowadays, at the forefront of any discussion of new employment initiatives and new productive developments is the small firm. Evidence presented by Birch (1979) and by Birch and MacCracken (1983) suggests that the large corporation cannot be regarded as the major source of new jobs, even though multi-national corporations as a group are significantly more important in influencing both the volume and nature of world trade than any single national government, or perhaps any collection of governments. Yet if large firms are viewed as playing a major role in economic development it is in conjunction with smaller enterprises.
Over the last twenty years major changes have taken place in the attitude of governments towards small firms.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Small Firms in Regional Economic DevelopmentBritain, Ireland and the United States, pp. 1 - 5Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1985
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