ABSTRACT
A long-term view, suggests that the decline of the family-owned business was inevitable when limited liability became available to all in the mid-nineteenth century, even though change was slow at first. One of the policies of the Conservative governments since 1979 has been to encourage self-employment and small businesses, for instance by granting Enterprise Allowances to those who become self-employed. In most cases, the greatest economies come in purchasing, marketing, research and development, and the ability to pool knowledge of the best practice in production techniques. Some very large and apparently successful firms such as the General Electric Company (GEC) and BTR confine their head office operation to the monitoring of subsidiaries' budgets and approval of capital expenditure. While a study of management training throws an indirect light on management practice, only a detailed study of what managers actually did can really help us here, and such studies hardly exist for the middle-management level of production, sales and other functions.
