Small and Big Business

Steindl, Josef

Bibliographic data

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Document type:: Works

Collection:: Josef Steindl Collection

Title:: Small and Big Business: Introduction [carbon copy of the 2nd revision]

Author:: Steindl, Josef

Scope:: Typoskript, Durchschlag, 21 Blätter, mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen

Year of publication:: 1978

Source material date:: [04.1978]

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 stellt die zweite Überarbeitung der 1972 neu verfassten Einleitung zu "Small and Big Business" (1945) vermutlich zwecks der spanischen Ausgabe des Buches dar. Die erste Seite enthält mit Bleistift festgehaltenen Seitenangaben, wo Korrekturen vorgenommen wurden.

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.3.10

Access:: Free access

18 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, but 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 several variables (man, output, capital). I turn now to 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 their 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 of service industries of various kinds, like repair shops and laundries 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 small scale? on the other hand, special shops with expert and personal service are established on a fairly small scale in certain goods ("boutiques" for women's dresses etc.).

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