Questioning the Growth Dogma: A Replication Study

Cyrine Ben-Hafaïedh and Anaïs Hamelin

Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 2023, vol. 47, issue 2, 628-647

Abstract: Firm growth is overwhelmingly presented as positive. Policy-makers strongly support it, educators recommend it, and academics commonly use it as a measure of success. While it is demonstrated that high-growth firms contribute disproportionately to job creation and economic growth and that firm growth can be associated with superior outcomes, some scholars strongly caution against the growth-at-all-costs paradigm. Amongst them, Davidsson et al. (2009) notably showed that profitability first rather than growth first is a preferable strategy for achieving high overall performance. We replicate and extend this seminal study to a sample covering close to 40% of all EU small and medium firms. We confirm their results and show that they hold over a longer time span and even exhibit a path dependency-type effect to the initial strategy (growth-oriented or profit-focused). We also show that their results are robust to the use of alternative methodologies. These results have important implications for the theory and practice that we discuss.

Keywords: growth; performance; profitability; replication; SMEs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:entthe:v:47:y:2023:i:2:p:628-647

DOI: 10.1177/10422587211059991

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