How Flexible are Small Firms? An Analysis on the Determinants of Flexibility

Guven Sak and Erol Taymaz

No 416, Working Papers from Economic Research Forum

Abstract: Although the standard microeconomic analysis is usually based on the assumption of the existence of a “representative firm,” it is known, as early as the time of the classical economists, that industrial economies are characterized by persistent heterogeneity among firms. Flexibility is one of the main sources of heterogeneity that is used to explain the vitality of small firms. It is suggested that small firms are more flexible than large firms; therefore, they can survive in an uncertain environment. This paper studies four sources of flexibility (technology, employment, networking, and entry/exit) in Turkish manufacturing industries. Whereas there are no differences between small and large firms in terms of flexibility of technology and employment practices, dynamic aspects, i.e. entry, exit, and growth processes are the main sources of small firm flexibility.

Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2004-05-08, Revised 2004-05-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published by The Economic Research Forum (ERF)

Downloads: (external link)
http://erf.org.eg/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/0416_final1.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://erf.org.eg/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/0416_final1.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://erf.org.eg/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/0416_final1.pdf)
http://bit.ly/2omsQhz (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:erg:wpaper:0416

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Economic Research Forum Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Namees Nabeel ().