Managing the transition from traditional to modern retailing

Abstract

Do contemporary models of corporate growth and performance throw light on the experience of small business in an LDC environment? If some sectors of small business have a strong tendency to grow or evolve as their market environment changes, then these firms are precisely those most likely to be the catalysts for change in the informal sectors, and to constitute a broad transitional sector lying between informal and formal. An application of growth modelling to such small businesses may not only throw light on the environmental limits of such models, but also contribute to the continuing debate in the development literature on the number of sectors to be found in a Third World urban economy, and on the connections or linkages between these sectors.