business classification to those enterprises which have either (1) fewer than 100 employees, or (2) less than one million dollars in annual receipts (Nappi, & Vora, 1980). One useful aspect of this definition is its recognition of the fact that numbers of employees and gross revenues are only loosely correlated. U.S. Department of Commerce (1980) guidelines, as an example, would classify a business as small, if its annual sales were less than $25 million.
The Nappi and Vora definition covers somewhat more than two thirds (67.9 percent) of all business enterprises in the United States (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1982). The firmsincluded in this definition, in turn, accounted for 40.8 percent of non government and non farm employment, 35.8 percent of sales revenues, and 32 percent of the country's GNP in the early 1980s (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1982). The Nappi and Vora definition of small business was used in this study.
In the examination of factors associated with financial management, which, if ef
...