Small and Big Business

Steindl, Josef

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Document type:: Works

Collection:: Josef Steindl Collection

Title:: Small and Big Business: Introduction [1st revision]

Author:: Steindl, Josef

Scope:: Typoskript, Durchschlag, 21 Blätter, mit zahlreichen handschriftlichen Korrekturen und Anmerkungen

Year of publication:: 1978

Source material date:: [04.1978]

Language:: English

Description:: Several decades after the first publication of this little book I do not find myself in full agreement with everything it contains. Since I have no time to re-write it completely I better leave it as it stands and try to explainin the following what amendemnts I should have liked to make. (Auszug, S. 1)

Note:: Das Typoskript beinhaltet die erste umfangreiche Überarbeitung der 1972 neu verfassten Einleitung zu "Small and Big Business" (1945) vermutlich zwecks der spanischen Ausgabe des Buches.

Related work:: Steindl, Josef: Economic Papers 1941-88. London: Macmillan, 1990 Steindl, Josef: Small and Big Business. Economic Problems of the Size of Firms. Oxford: Blackwell, 1945

Topic:: Firm and market structure

JEL Classification:: D24 [Production, Cost, Capital, Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity, Capacity] D43 [Market Structure, Pricing, and Design: Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection] L11 [Production, Pricing, and Market Structure, Size Distribution of Firms]

Shelfmark:: S/M.3.9

Access:: Free access

17 criterion of size, as Hr. Johnstone^ proposed, -the automated plants would count as small (or lower medium) sized, and output per man would accordingly have a maximum at this level. I cannot find anything enlightening in this use of language, hut it does in itself, of course, not contradict my picture of the relations of technical progress and scale, which requires in any case a description of the plant in terms of oeeond variables (man, output, capital). v 7 ; ■) t ' t t.c a/ lo A point on which I would like to correct myself again: Just as I was wrong to play down diseconomies I was too unfavourable on the chances of the small firms, although my remarks on JLts shrinking degree of independence were borne out by the developments since. One has to take into account the emergence and vast growth of new industries mostly composed of small firms (new types f f (6- service industries of various trends, like the "American laundry” etc.). Further, the tendency for large industrial concerns in some industries to subcontract work has been widespread. In retail trade and service industries a kind of polarization seems to take place in advanced industrial countries: On the one hand the bulk of essentials is traded in self-service shops which are best carried on on a not too tb. Johnstone, Statistical Cost Analysis, London i960

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