Small Business Growth Characteristics

Calvin M. Boardman, Jon W. Bartley and Richard L. Ratliff

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 1981, vol. 5, issue 3, 33-43

Abstract: Financial characteristics are presented for small firms whose sales increased at a rate greater than the inflation rate over the period 1974–1979. It is noted that these characteristics differ somewhat depending on whether they were a retailer, manufacturer or wholesaler. A growing small firm is generally characterized as one which increases its leverage, decreases its liquidity and incurs a heavy investment in operational assets. Interestingly, it is also shown that these same characteristics, if taken to extremes, are typical of the failed companies in the sample. The reward of growth is success; the risk of growth is failure.

Date: 1981
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/104225878100500307 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:entthe:v:5:y:1981:i:3:p:33-43

DOI: 10.1177/104225878100500307

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().