ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the evolution of knowledge on employment in small firms by exploring both the employment relations and small firms’ literatures. It examines the methodological and practical issues facing those seeking to collect and analyse data and provide interpretations of labour management and employment relations in the small enterprise. As background to understanding our knowledge base on the employment relationship in small firms, it is important to recognise the cumulative development of research in both the employment relations and small firms’ literatures. One of the touchstones of the study of the contemporary employment relationship in Britain is undoubtedly the Workforce Industrial Relations Surveys (WIRS) and from 1998, renamed the Workforce Employee Relations Surveys (WERS). It has been argued that the introduction of the WIRS (subsequently WERS) series demonstrated the rise of large-scale variable-centred surveys and the need to consider sampling methods and appropriate analytical techniques.
