Making a career in mid-sized organisations
Author: Subhashis Das Gupta

Mid sized companies must survive and prosper within the free market system ,not outside of it ,facing its force directly ,not protected by artificial barriers .Smaller firms must compete effectively against mammoths and gnats ,guarding and guaranteeing their own existence . Anything less is self defeating for the firm and counter-productive for society . Life dependent on largesse is life dependent on wind .

Small and medium sized companies are a critical component of modern capitalism .They assume the efficiency of the economic sector by thwarting monopolies and secure the pluralism of the political sector by disrupting the hegemony between big business and big government .

The most widely repeated strategic axiom is the relationship between profitability and market share .A difference in 10% in market share has shown to be accompanied by a corresponding difference of 5% points in pre tax profits . On both sides of the production marketing coin , big companies wield simply more muscle :economies of scale in procurement ,manufacturing ,and other cost components and market power in bargaining ,adminstering prices ,and selling more units .

Some medium sized firms are forging the future ,achieving technological and business breakthroughs ;they are organisations resonant with current trends ; they are new leaders of a new age .Mid sized firms have competitive edge ,catalyzed by their capacity to commercialize original ideas more quickly and build novel structure more easily .

Comparative advantage of mid sized firms :

1.X-inefficiency is a technical term defined as the excess of unnecessary cost as a percentage of actual cost - and it seems to be increasing with increasing size . Executive luxury nurtured by substantial profits (two corporate jets when one is questionable ) ,managerial flabbiness spawned by hefty margins (swollen staffs ) ,the bureaucratic burden of large organisations (massive personnel departments ),the sluggishness of pure size (interminable coordinating committees ) .Thus smaller firms can be inherently more efficient .

2.Employee content - There are other diseconomies of pure size .Worker satisfaction is reduced by increasing company size . Employees in large companies have high degree of personal alienation and have depressed levels of job satisfaction - both of which are tied to the rigid ,unilateral type of poer structure associated with large organisations . Employees in smaller comapnies ,have in general ,greater task variety ,more individual responsibility ,higher satisfaction from the work product ,and an enhanced level of local identity . Aggregating these elements together ,psychologists who study organisations use the term content ,and this content is said to be inversely proportional to firm size ., i.e. content decreases as firm size increases .Other things being equal ,workers in smaller companies will produce more abundantly ,do it more efficiently ,and be happier in the process .

3.Innovation - Research suggests that innovetion more often emerges from medium -sized firms i..companies with a 5-20% share of the market . It is common knowledge that revolutionary ideas germinate with high frequency from small firms ,sociological structure that have neither mental constraint ,nor proper predilection .

The jungle analogy seems uncomfortably appropriate :the larger predator waits lazily until its smaller rival does all the work of seeking ,finding , capturing ,and getting food -only then to steal it by brute strength .Mid-sized firms must therefore know their environment ,what their large competitor will do ,how their small competitors will react . It's a tight rope game ,with the results carrying meaning to society as well as the firm .

Medium sized firms are important - economically ,politically ,socially and technologically .The self determined survival and prosperity must be assured by the force of internal strength .

Hence would you like to make a career in a mid-sized firm ?








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S.DasGupta is a Chemical Engg. MBA from Calcutta ,India . He has owrk experience in transnational and multinational corporations and an Indian diversifed conglomerate .He is currently a Senior Manager Operations at Duncans Industries Ltd .You can reach him at subby_d_g@hotmail.com

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