From the telephone to the economic exchange: how small businesses use the telephone in their market relations

The fixed telephone plays an important role in the organisation of economic activity. As a low-cost and universal communication tool, it enables actors to pass on information and to have transactions at a distance. However, research on telephone use in the professional sphere has been limited to the particular situation of call centres and has mainly investigated organisational and interactional issues. In this paper I attempt to broaden the scope of analysis and to characterise more generally the inscription of telephony in economic networks. I focus on the population of small businesses and draw on a project concerning 881 firms. The project enables me to combine telephone-traffic data and quantitative survey data concerning the engagement of the telephone in economic activities for these small businesses. A specific methodological standpoint is proposed to explore this empirical material and to characterise the particular nature of telephony in small businesses. The dynamic and asymmetric nature of telephony leads me to question the way in which communication tools can be integrated in an analysis of the spatial inscription of economic activity and networks.