Abstract
Most of the empirical and theoretical work on organizations has dealt with large and structurally complex corporations. Small firms, however, are increasingly common and contribute in important ways to our society, economically, politically and socially. Can we really do research on small firms using our traditional understanding of organizations? Is it not necessary to treat small firms as a special form of organization, fundamentally different from large companies? If they are special, in what way do they differ from larger companies? This dissertation concerns the nature of small firms from a managerial perspective. Intensive empirical studies of organizational processes in two small growing firms are employed to build up a proposal for a new set of concepts with which we can better describe and analyze small firm behavior. Equipped with these concepts the author analyzes three central topics: Does small firms have special small scale advantages? Does increased firm size pose a threat to these advantages? Can these advantages be reproduced in large corporations? The reader will be offered a perspective in which the small firm is more than a firm. It is a person making a great performance,