Small Business and the Theory of Small Bureaucracies

Abstract

Findings from a partial replication of Blau's 1966 study of small bureaucracies suggest that small businesses of six or fewer employees offer substantial promise for the construction of theories of organizational behavior. Based on the strategy of examining simple forms of phenomena to isolate basic relationships, certain bivariate relationships rejected by Blau for larger organizations, are found to be significant for the smallest organizations in the present study. An expanded multi-variate causal regression analysis provides additional evidence. Seventy-seven small business firms constitute the sample and the variables analyzed are division of labor, professionalization, managerial hierarchy, and administrative apparatus.