Publication Date

2014

Abstract

Small businesses are regarded the engine of the economy But just what is a small business Depending on where one looks in the law the definitions vary and they differ from one section to another Unfortunately what these various size classifications fail to assess are the policy considerations and the legislative intent for granting regulatory preferences to small concerns to begin with In the last century the US government has been cultivating one such policy of fiscal and economic growth Consequently Congress and private institutions have been acting to incentivize support and reward entrepreneurship through the law in order to stimulate the economy Nevertheless rather than targeting entrepreneurial businesses directly the law grants preferences to entities according to their size reflecting an obsolescent mirror of past economies Today while most entrepreneurial firms may start small not all small firms innovate and create new economic valueThis article applies mirror theory and proposes a novel legal model that strives to correlate between the design of our legal rules the goals they set to advance and the societal trends they reflect The article suggests replacing the current sizebased approach in our laws with a model that measures firms' entrepreneurial orientation Unlike the current binary smallornot standard this multitiered simple and flexible model reduces the intrinsic arbitrariness complexity and uncertainty in current legal definitions

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