 Looking inside the ‘black box’ of digital firm scaling: An ethnographically informed conceptualisationRoss Brown, Suzanne Mawson, Augusto Rocha and Alex Rowe Journal of Business Research, 2025, vol. 186, issue C Abstract: In recent years there has been an upsurge of interest in firm scaling. Owing to the fact our conceptual and theoretical grasp of this phenomenon remains under-developed, this paper offers a novel conceptualisation of the scaling process based on an in-depth ethnographic study of a London-based digital Fintech. Scaling involves deliberately enacting and surmounting a series of managerial challenges such as human capital re-positioning, business model reconfiguration, customer acquisition and the acquisition of external growth capital. Our theoretical contribution views the micro-foundations of scaling as a distinctive relational process-based phenomenon. Under the conceptual framework posited, entrepreneurial human capital and successful scaling are inextricably interwoven. Entrepreneurial founders and managers are pivotal for orchestrating scaling and our conceptualisation builds upon the trigger point model of firm development, which reinforces the primacy of entrepreneurial agency for optimising growth triggers. Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Scaling; Founders; Trigger points; Dynamic capabilities (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:186:y:2025:i:c:s0148296324004910 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2024.114987 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier |
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