ABSTRACT
Having looked in some detail at the behaviour of the individual, we turn now to the analysis of a second important economic agent – the firm. A firm, like the proverbial elephant, is difficult to define but is nevertheless a reasonably recognizable entity, and the indications are that there are currently of the order of half a million firms of one sort or another operating in the United Kingdom concerned with the production and trading of a great variety of goods and services. They range from small one-man businesses to giant multinational undertakings whose annual turnover is comparable to the gross national product of some European countries. Amongst them can be found immense diversity not only in size and in what they produce, but in the way they are organized, how they are financed, the conditions under which they operate, and so forth. Despite all this diversity, they share, like elephants, certain common features.
