While the electrical and engineering area rose and media and publishing remained roughly static with sixrepresentatives building property and textiles continue to

While the electrical and engineering area rose and media and publishing remained roughly static, with sixrepresentatives, building, property and textiles continue to make little showing.In geographical terms, the Home Counties have seen their share of the Top 100 grow in the past year, with London and the East Midlands slipping back. The number of companies involved in food, catering, leisure and retail rose strongly, from 17 to 24, over the year and led Mr Crockford to see signs of returning consumer confidence and spending. Mr King sees it as a sales and distribution company that happens to deal in computer parts. Consistent service and anticipation of customer needs are the keys to its success, he believes.The largest sector is in fact that of the second-placed managed catering company, Russell & Brand.

There are 20 such companies in the Top 100, slightly down on last year's 23, but computers play a strong part in the success of many others that are not strictly involved in information technology.Indeed, Datrontech insists it is not a hi-tech company either. But Mr Read argues that many companies with similar turnover to the £48.3m it reported for last year would have two to three times as many.Morse avoids this, he says, by being more efficient - through paying people to be more productive - and by not getting into areas that are not central to its main business: reselling both open systems products and personal computers to large institutions and companies, including. investment banks, local authorities and such commercial organisations as J Sainsbury.As all this suggests, computers and related technology once more figure strongly in the listing. "We hire the best people and pay them well because they take a high degree of responsibility," Mr Read said.And, although such companies have increased staff numbers markedly since starting up in the mid-1980s, they do not lightly take on extra employees.Morse, which started as a division of Tecno, the camera shop chain formerly owned by its chairman, John Britten, now has about 120 people working for it.

Nigel Crockford, the Price Waterhouse partner responsible for middle-market and growth companies, said this was "a remarkable achievement when one considers that unemployment over the five years to December 1994 has risen by about 50 per cent".The managers of these companies attribute this performance at least in part to their determination to stick to what they know best - what larger organisations and their consultants have come to refer to as "core competence". Nicholas Read, managing director of Morse Group, the computer integration company that followed up 11th place in last year's main listing to win the Middle Market Award, said: "A narrow focus suits us in the same way banks don't want to get involved in IT; they use us to worry about IT."Great importance is attached to the role not just of managers but employees as a whole. At Datrontech, the computer components distributor that improved on last year's 28th position to take third place this time, one of the key motives behind last month's flotation was to get the staff more involved by giving them stakes in the company. "It's part of the culture," said Steve King, the managing director.At Morse, all sales people in effect run their own small businesses, with minimum interference from senior manage- ment.