New Perspectives on Firm Growth

This collection of articles by an internationally recognized team of authors is a welcome addition to the literature on firm growth. The authors, singly and together, have previously made important contributions with regard to frameworks for understanding growth, as well as cutting-edge empirical research on the actual growth process. In this volume, the authors bring previous research up-to-date, providing a critical look at what has been published in the last decade and offering new theoretically informed insights in how and why firms grow. Howard Aldrich, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, US This insightful volume presents a collection of innovative works by two of the leading researchers of firm growth. The studies extend previous research by providing stronger theoretical underpinnings and using longitudinal databases that can separate in time the firms growth from its presumed causes. They also break new ground by examining different modes of growth, such as sales growth vs. employment growth, and organic growth vs. acquisition-based expansion. Further, the studies investigate the drivers of firm growth and take a critical look at the effects, such as under what circumstances high growth is associated with high profitability. The issue of how firm growth is achieved and managed, and what consequences it has for different stakeholders is both theoretically interesting and practically important. The book will strongly appeal to academics of entrepreneurship, small business management and strategy.