science

Small office/home office

Small office/home office is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Small office/home office rather than just read about it. In short: Small office/home office (or single office/home office; sometimes short SOHO) refers to the category of business or cottage industry that involves from 1 to 10 workers. In New Zealand, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) defines a small office as 6–19 employees and a micro office as 1–5.

Key takeaways

Small office/home office belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Small office/home office to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Small office/home office from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Small office/home office (or single office/home office; sometimes short SOHO) refers to the category of business or cottage industry that involves from 1 to 10 workers. In New Zealand, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) defines a small office as 6–19 employees and a micro office as 1–5.

History 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 the paperwork that accompanied them was limited. The industrial revolution aggregated workers in factories, to mass-produce goods. In most circumstances, the white collar counterpart—office work—was aggregated as well in large buildings, usually in cities or densely populated suburban areas. Beginning in the mid-1980s, the advent of the personal computer and fax machine, plus breakthroughs in telecommunications, created opportunities for office workers to decentralize. Decentralization was also perceived as benefiting employers in terms of lower overheads and potentially greater productivity.

Professions Many consultants and the members of such professions like lawyers, real estate agents, and surveyors in small and medium-sized towns operate from home offices. Several ranges of products, such as the armoire desk, all-in-one printer, virtual assistants, home servers and network-attached storage are designed specifically for the SOHO market. A number of books and magazines have been published and marketed specifically at this type of office. These range from general advice texts to specific guidebooks on such challenges as setting up a small PBX for the office telephones. Technology has also created a demand for larger businesses to employ individuals who work from home. Sometimes these people remain as independent businesspersons, and sometimes they become employees of a larger company. The small office home office has undergone a transformation since its advent as the Internet has enabled anyone working from a home office to compete globally. Technology has made this possible through email, the World-Wide Web, e-commerce, videoconferencing, remote desktop software, VPN, VLAN, webinar systems, and telephone connections by VOIP. Due to the increase in small and home offices, web services and standard business software have been created to directly assist smaller businesses in standard business practice. In many countries, a home office can be claimed as a tax deduction only if office space and supplies are not provided by a corporate office.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Small office/home office

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Small office/home office claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Small office/home office before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Small office/home office ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Small office/home office

In research: Small office/home office appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Small office/home office in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Small office/home office is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Decentralization, Office work, Rooms, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Small office/home office outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Small office/home office in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Small office/home office means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Small office/home office out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Small office/home office in simple terms?

Why does Small office/home office matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Small office/home office?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Small office/home office.