Small office

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This article is about the category of business. For the United Kingdom government department responsible for internal affairs, see Home Office.

Office types

The modern concept of Small Office and Home Office or SoHo, or Small or Home Office or Single Office/Home Office deals with the category of business which can be from 1 to 10 workers. Larger business enterprises, one notch up the size scale, are often categorized as a small business. When a company reaches 100 or more employees, it is often referred to as a Small and Medium-sized Enterprise.

Before the 19th century, and the spread of the industrial revolution around the globe, nearly all offices were small offices and/or home offices, with only a few exceptions. Most businesses were small, and so was the paperwork that went with them.

The industrial revolution aggregated workers in factories, to mass produce goods. For the most part, the so-called "white collar" counterpart— office work— was aggregated as well, in large buildings, usually in cities or densely populated suburban areas.

A home office.
A home office.

Beginning in the mid-1990s, the advent of the personal computer, and breakthroughs in voice and data communication, created opportunities for office workers to decentralize. Decentralization also benefits employers, in lower overhead, and in many cases, greater productivity.

At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, the term "Small or Home Office" and its variants —along with the acronym "SOHO"— have been used to a great extent by companies who market products targeting the great numbers of small businesses which have a tiny or medium sized office.

Several ranges of products, such as the Armoire desk and a few other desk forms, are often designed specifically for the "SOHO" market. Several kinds of books are written and marketed specifically for this type of office, ranging from general advice texts to specific guidebooks on setting up such things as a small PBX for the office telephones.

Many consultants and the members of several professions such as lawyers, real estate agents or surveyors in small and medium sized towns operate from such home offices.

The 36 hour or 48 hour cycles of much of software development has led many practitioners in this domain to do their work in home offices given the difficulty of the traditional business world to adapt its "normal" hours to some of the more extreme needs of software engineering.

Technology has also created a demand for larger businesses to employ individuals who work from home. (See also Homesourcing) Sometimes these people remain as an independent businessperson, and sometimes they actually become employees of a larger company.

In popular literature the home office has not been the topic of as many works as the "normal" modern office. Brian Basset, the author of the newspaper comic strip Adam, has sometimes described its more humorous aspects.

The small office home office has gone through a great transformation recently since technology has enabled anyone working from a home office to compete globally. Technology has made this possible through webinar systems and telephone connections through Skype and the like. The Virtual Office concept has been expanded to enable anyone to do globally what they could do locally before. With a global reach through the use of technology the [SOHO] small office/home office now has a better chance of emerging as a greater challenge in the world marketplace.

[edit] See also

[edit] Further reading

  • Basset, Brian (1997). Bless This Home Office ...With tax credits: An Adam Compilation. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing.  [a comical view]
  • (1998) in Johnson, Karen K. (ed.): Ortho's All About Home Offices. DesMoines, Iowa: Ortho Publishing Group.  [mostly the home handyman's view]
  • Manroe, Candace Ord (1997). The Home Office: Setting Up, Furnishing and Decorating Your Own Work Space. Michael Friedman Publishing Group Inc..  [mostly a decorating view of things]
  • Zimmerman, Neal (2002). Home Workspace Idea Book. Taunton Press.  [small office and home office design of all types and sizes]