Method for and Analysis of Early-Stage Firm Growth Patterns Using World Bank Data

Raúl Estrada-Lavilla () and José Ruiz-Navarro
Additional contact information
Raúl Estrada-Lavilla: Department of Business Organization, University of Cádiz, 11002 Cádiz, Spain
José Ruiz-Navarro: Department of Business Organization, University of Cádiz, 11002 Cádiz, Spain

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 4, 1-17

Abstract: Venture growth and entrepreneurial activity impact aspects of modern societies, such as wealth creation, employment, and innovation, and also potentially influence sustainable development, a key focus in the social sciences. The study of firms has benefitted from solid theoretical foundations dating back to Edith Penrose’s The Theory of the Growth of the Firm. Yet, early-stage firms, as one of the fastest-growing types of firms, continue to be poorly understood. Therefore, we focus our analysis on the specificities of the growth patterns of new firms. Our contribution to the literature is to derive an empirically based set of growth patterns observed among early-stage firms that can be used for theory testing and in proofs. Our analysis, grounded in data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys (WBES) encompassing over 140,000 entries, provides insights into growth patterns in early-stage firms, indirectly indicating potential intersections with sustainable business practices related, for example, to management team experience. More importantly, to make our research applicable to current real-world decisions, we evaluate the predictive capacity of these growth patterns and provide a series of conclusions that could help practitioners better evaluate the growth potential of early-stage firms.

Keywords: growth patterns; early-stage firm; World Bank (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/4/1450/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/4/1450/ (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:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:4:p:1450-:d:1336042

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().