That looks identical to a Sony M-900. But I guess it's an equivalent model aimed at business executives,as the model name looks to be a BM-something. Also, the M-900 is labeled as a Micro Cassette-corder, whereas this is a Micro Portable Dictator/Transcriber.
Was it possible for use by a typist to listen and transcribe the dictation from the tape given to her ? We used micro- cassettes for this purpose in our law office but they were not SONY models but Olympus if I remember correctly. However the typists' units did not have the recording facility simply playback mode
Found it, Sony BM-600, a beautiful microcassette player but it's only mono. This would have been a monster if it was stereo....
"Take a letter Miss Jones" Tape decks used by typists would usually have a foot switch so that they could pause while they caught up with the typing or answered the phone etc. You have to remember that even in the early 1980s it was uncommon for people, especially management, to be able to type. That was why large companies had typing pools. Interesting that Philip mentions a law office. In the 1990s a friend worked for the Police typing transcripts of interviews, which involved lots of words you wouldn't find in a school dictionary. Rather than Microcassette they were probably recording using a deck similar to this:
