Regulatory agencies and the U.S. Congress are recognizing both the values and emerging issues for small firms as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) has been implemented. On April 23, 2006, the Advisory Committee on Smaller Public Companies issued a final report to the Security and Exchange Commission assessing the impact of SOX on smaller public companies (Final Report 2006). A random sample of CEOs, CFOs, and board members of small, medium, and large firms were surveyed and their opinions of the overall impact of SOX on their firm were:

Construct a cluster bar chart of these findings (Michelson, Stryker and Thorne 2009).

Impact of Sox Little or no impact Moderate to very major impact Small Firms 17 13 Medium Firms 13 41 Large Firms