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International Small Business Journal
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Testing a Framework of the Organization of Small Firms

Fast-growth, High-tech SMEs

Mark W. Gilman

University of Kent, UK, M.W.Gilman{at}kent.ac.uk

Paul K. Edwards

University of Warwick, UK, Paul.Edwards{at}wbs.ac.uk

Studies of small firms tend to assume either that models derived from large firms can be applied directly or that small firms are uniformly distinct from large ones. A recent framework, based mainly on low-wage family-owned firms, has identified an analytical space to identify different types of small firm.This article tests out that framework in a different context: four high-tech and non-family-owned firms. The framework identified market conditions and strategic choice as key measures, and was useful in capturing practice, though it also needed further refinement. Key substantive implications were: apparently similar firms in fact behaved differently, for reasons to do with their market situations and the choices they made; and the firms displayed tensions between `modern' business strategies and `traditional' and informal employment practices, tensions that the framework helps to capture.

Key Words: employment relations • fast growth • high performance workplaces • high tech • institutional theory • resource-based view

International Small Business Journal, Vol. 26, No. 5, 531-558 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0266242608094028
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