Rarely has it been possible to study multiple industries in multiple countries and multiple generations over 100 years, to uncover the challenge of business growth and the times when owners decide against it - as well as the implications of it for employees. Our purpose in this book is to apply the ideas of the Anglo-German economist E.F. Schumacher in telling the otherwise unobservable entrepreneurial business history that is embedded within the life-stories of its subjects. In so doing, we question the economic nature of our lives in the twenty-first century.
