Suchergebnisse

1. The political construction of the "small firm" -- 2. Theorising the political economy of the "small firm" -- 3. Constructing the "small firm" -- 4. The case study : the "small firm" construct in UK Parliamentary debate -- 5. The exclusion of the "small firm" -- 6. The "small firm" onto the British political agenda -- 7. The invention and exploitation of the "small firm" -- 8. Conclusions.

For many, small firms are everyday realities of the economy and visible in every high-street and industrial estate. Their existence and importance is unquestionable. Such beliefs are understandable, but the authors of this new book would suggest they are misguided. The Political Economy of the Small Firm challenges the assumptions regarding small firms that pervade society and political representation. Small firms are not organised into a homogenous sector that has a clear constituency or political influence. In fact, the small firm is shown to be an inconstant political construct that is discursively ethereal and vulnerable to political exploitation. Fusing theories from political science, management and linguistics, Dannreuther and Perren assert that the idea of the small firm is an important discursive resource used by political actors to legitimise their actions, influence their citizens and help sustain regimes of accumulation. On top of this, the authors also empirically test their claims against 200 years of UK parliamentary debate, from the Industrial Revolution to the Blair government. The political construction of the small firm is shown not only to provide rhetorical mechanisms to maintain periods of capitalist accumulation, but also to increase the relative autonomy of the state and to centralise power to elite politicians. For a period of 150 years up to the 1970s, the small firm was an unexplored presence, below the political radar and resonant with poor working standards and extreme forms of competition. During the so-called Fordist period from the 1930s, the small firm was seen as the dirty, out-dated, contrast to the clean, modern future represented by mass production and corporations. The perceived failure of Fordism led to the invention of the small firm and its presentation as an ideal political construct. By fabricating assertions of what small firms are and what they want, frequently out of conjecture, the authors of this book show how political elites have been able to advocate radical reformist agendas since the 1970s in the name of a phantom constituency.--

This paper argues that the emergence, assertion and failure of the financialisation regime was enabled by the political construction of the small firm. Key shifts in societal relations, the formulation of new agendas and the extension of new forms of political, economic and social rights were asserted by political elites through the instrument of the political construct of the small firm. The paper argues that this is because of the dominant specificity model that characterises the small firm, and demonstrates how the denaturing of the small firm has allowed political elites to assert invariant behaviours to resolve historically specific contradictions in capitalist accumulation. The argument is demonstrated through parliamentary debates and through the redefinition of individual risk as household risk through the 2002 Enterprise Act.

AbstractFirm size is found to affect strategic decisions significantly, whereas technology and market stability stimulate product development and innovation.