ABSTRACT
When Jerald Stokes, president of Arkansas Technologies in Clarksville, Arkansas, faced a congressional subcommittee to offer testimony about the problems confronting small manufacturers, he did not spare his own camp. The first obstacle to modernization, he told the subcommittee, is that "most small business manufacturers do not plan long-range and cannot visualize capital expenditures alternatives as a company strategy rather than a quick fix for a current problem. Some rural manufacturers in the South that have embraced new technologies and methods despite the multitude of roadblocks to modernization have become the equals of any manufacturers in the world. Modernization as public policy puts a very different spin on public sector behavior. The best firms understand that the ground rules for making investment decisions have changed. For them, modernization is not simply a matter of replacing worn-out or outdated equipment with more modern machinery.
