ABSTRACT
The evidence presented in this chapter relates to very small firms, technically microfirms,1 which are at the smallest end of the reverse J-shaped size distribution of business enterprises (Daly and McCann, 1992). Relatively little is known about these firms, many of which are sole proprietorships. For such firms, annual sales (turnover) may not even exceed the value added tax (VAT) threshold. The evidence to which this chapter refers aims to dispel our ignorance of this relatively unexplored small business constituency by obtaining primary source data using fieldwork methods (Sekaran, 1992; Burgess, 1984).
