ABSTRACT
Every business needs staff. Even sole traders cannot do everything for themselves and need to employ staff, even if only on a part-time basis, supplemented by freelance services from outsiders who are not, technically speaking, employees but independent contractors. As firms and companies grow, it is the number of staff employed which is the usual measure of size. The Bolton Report in the 1970s, which reported on the small firm, was empowered to investigate and hear evidence from firms employing 200 or less employees. This does not seem very small in today's climate, when about 1000 firms are being established each week by sole traders under the Enterprise Allowance Scheme – most of them with no employees at all. Larger firms employ very large numbers of people – the largest employer in the United Kingdom, set up in 1947, was the British Transport Commission with 900000 employees. It proved to be hopelessly unwieldy and by 1953 was in the process of being broken up – a process which is still continuing even today with the privatisation of further sectors of transport.
