ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to outline the work of economists and others on the growth of small firms and to provide a conceptual framework for the empirical analysis that follows. Despite the increasing importance of the growth of surviving cohorts of small firms to the economy the development of a theoretical understanding of the process of small firm growth is a matter of much contention. It is argued that it is the very nature of the change from a small to a large firm that makes the development of theory difficult. The internal organisation of large and small firms is so fundamentally different that to develop a theory of firm growth that operates along a size continuum is somewhat spurious (Storey 1994).
