ABSTRACT
The small business sector has expanded in recent decades, stimulated by changes in the industrial structure of Britain and Government commitment to encourage new forms of economic enterprise. There has been an increased confidence in the potential of small firms to contribute to the regeneration of the British economy (Williams 1985). The importance of small firms has been recognized by Government to the extent that it is now regarded as a vital element to increase the rate of job creation and reorientate social attitudes towards enterprise and entrepreneurship (Weiner 1981). There has been a rise in the rate of new firm formation in the past few years (Ganguly 1985), to the extent that Britain had in the mid 1980s the largest proportion of selfemployed people since the 1920s: one-tenth of the working population (Curran 1986).
