Small Business- The Concept Of Small Business

The term “business” has a narrow line of definition, which has made it Unambiguous to define as a concept. The Oxford Dictionary of current English (1998) defines a business as "one's regular occupation or profession; one’s own concern; task or duty; serious work or activity, buying and selling; trade or a commercial firm". From the foregoing definition a general consensus about the meaning of a business is summarized to mean any activity or undertaking engaged by person or group of persons to provide products or services so as to make profit.

A business therefore could be carried out in various forms that can be categorized into “small”, “ Medium” and “large’’ businesses. These forms each have it’s own conceptual meanings but our discussions will center on the concept of “small business”. The concept is synonymous with small-scale enterprises (SSE), small-scale industries (SSI), small-scale business, Small firms, or in some cases Small and Medium Scale business (SME’s).

These concepts or ideas would be interchangeably used. It is not easy to really give a concise definition of what a “small business” really means but different authors, agencies, and government to define small-scale business have used certain criteria. Numerous definitions of small-scale industries exist in the world and they vary from country to country. In line with the criteria of defining a small business, the terms small business sector and small business management are used to describe how certain group of enterprises are run. This implies that these enterprises have certain characteristics and management issues that distinguish them from other organizations in terms of size.

Observed, small business or small scale industries vary from country to country, To develop the small business sector, small businesses should be conceptualized in their traditional context. This means that the concept should be based on the individual country from which it is applied. Thus small business in the USA will mean another thing in Japan.etc

A small business enterprise in some countries will involve such activities as cottage industry, mechanical workshops, those based on sole proprietorship and family business. These activities may involve one or more persons with mainly owner-based capital

Wikipedia, an Internet encyclopedia supports the above view by commenting “small businesses are common in many countries, depending on the economic system in operation. Typical examples include small shops, hairdressers, tradesmen, solicitors, lawyers, accountants, restaurant, guest houses, photographers, small scale manufacturing e.t.c.”

The concept of small business is purely based of traditional concept of the areas of applications.