Entrepreneurship is the foundation of the economic for each country. It has an inevitable impact onmicro- and macro-economic factors such as GDP, economic growth, employment/unemploymentrate, regional development, etc. Thus, entrepreneurial practices are crucial for each country in orderto have better economic conditions.Growth is the dominant part of entrepreneurial practices from which the success of small firms canbe assessed and evaluated. Firm’s growth involves different aspects such as motives, finance andownership strategies, indicators, and growth stimulus. These factors together provide a pattern ofgrowth that is different from one company to another.Since the advent of the Internet there has been changes in the business world and the terms such asdotcom, digital entrepreneurship, e-services, e-banking, etc. made a dramatic change in the way ofdoing business. Some companies were established based on the Internet and their income andexistence relied on the Internet. Some others on the other hand, use traditional method of businessbesides using the Internet as an extra tool.This study examines the small business growth pattern in order to find out how small firms grow.Furthermore, the difference between the growth pattern of digital firms and traditional companies isexamined to find out how the pattern of growth differs from dotcoms to the brick-and-mortars.This study is based on a qualitative research method with the approach of a case study research. Thecase study is designed on one major case to go deep while having four other supporting companiesin order to get the best results with the least subjectivity. The questionnaire was designed on a semistructureand the results were coded for the pattern. The questions were designed based on theconceptual framework which was changes based on the results and optimized.The results from this study provide a framework that gives a pattern of growth for small firms. Thesuggested framework of growth pattern has some major components: growth motive, growthstrategy, growth indicator, and growth stimulus. Furthermore, the research findings define the majordifferences between the growth pattern of dotcoms and brick-and-mortars.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the life cycle stages of the chosen gazelles in Sweden and identify their effectiveness related to the stages. Furthermore, we study whether the given characteristic of the gazelle companies correspond to the suggested characteristics of the given theoretical framework. Gazelles, as the outstanding performers of both financial profits and job creators of our society, they are always struggling to sustain growth and satisfy market needs in order to maintain their prestigious status. Therefore, it is critical for them to access their abilities as well as constraints of the current organizational structures and we seek the solutions to these problems through the organizational life cycle theory perspective. Our study focuses on the Dagens Industri’s gazelle award winners that are carefully evaluated by the strict criteria it provides. Also, we revisit the various previous studies in the field of the organizational life cycle and effectiveness in order to provide the foundation for our analysis. In order to serve our purpose, we study 26 gazelles from Sweden in dept by reviewing their annual reports and official websites and provide the reader with quantities data research that are self-administrated concerning the different attributes of the life cycle stages and effectiveness. In conclusion, we find that the majority of the Swedish gazelle companies we have studied correspond to the second stage of the life cycle model which focuses on human relations model as an effectiveness area. However, these firms demonstrate unique effectiveness that genuine SMEs do not have, such as high focus on R&D and harmony between flexibility and control in their organizational structure.

Networking has shown to benefit SMEs in terms of increasing resource acquisition and knowledge transfer, two vital components in SME growth and survival. However, previous research has indicated that SME network management is largely determined by the strategic orientation of the firm, which in turn, is influenced by the owner/manager. Third party involvement has moreover been suggested to positively influence networking participation by facilitating the overall networking process for SMEs. In the present study, the moderating effect of non-profit, municipal third party involvement, on the relationship between firm growth orientation and network intensity and range, is thus examined.

Using information from the Amadeus dataset and the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey, we provide an empirical investigation of the industry and firm-specific determinants of the intensive margin (i.e., within existing firms) job creation process in eleven Central and Eastern European economies during the period 2002-2009. Our results indicate that during the years prior to the global financial crisis, traditional industries were crucial for the net intensive margin creation of jobs in the region but, by contrast, services firms were less vulnerable to the economic downturn. At the firm level, small and young already existing firms and subsidiaries of multinational corporate groups tended to register the highest employment growth rates. The empirical results also indicate that more productive surviving firms tended to be less vulnerable to the economic downturns in terms of employment change. The perceived quality of the business climate by enterprises of the region is robustly correlated with intensive margin employment growth both before and during the recent global financial crisis. Interestingly, the best performing surviving firms are estimated to be most negatively affected by a poor business environment. Institutional barriers thus appear as an important factor hampering firm growth in Central and Eastern Europe. These findings hold for the group of high-growth surviving firms (gazelles) that disproportionately accounted for the creation of new jobs in these economies.

Entrepreneurship is the force that drives economic, social and technical progress. A small percentage of firms (5%) is responsible for a disproportionately large amount of net job creation (>50%). Named high growth firms, these successful enterprises have been in the spotlight of research looking into the key drivers of firm growth and growth policy. This dissertation explores high growth from multiple perspectives: at the level of the firm, by understanding how the definition of a high growth firm impacts its characteristics and expected performance over time; at the local level, by isolating the effect of political connections of firm performance and firm entry; and at the macro level, by observing the evolution of entrepreneurship during transition. The first study finds that most HGFs are unable to maintain high growth rates for long, but do register lower volatility in growth rates and a higher chance of survival. Results on growth volatility and persistence vary significantly with the specific definition of “high growth” used as well as with the specific variable used to measure growth (e.g., revenue, employees, profit, productivity). These findings have direct implications for growth policies and programs that depend on identifying HGFs. The second study indicates a strong significant effect of political alignment on revenue growth and firm entry. Larger firms take advantage of political connections for performance gains, while small firms are negatively impacted. Furthermore, alignment reduces entry into entrepreneurship by 8-11%. These findings establish political alignment and local-level business-politics collusion as important dynamics to consider when evaluating entrepreneurship policy in developing countries. The third study describes the interdependence between entrepreneurship, institutions, and transitions. The case of Romania shows that the beginning of transition was characterized by an initial explosion of newly created private enterprises, followed by a declining trend in enterprise creation and, recently, by a new increase in entrepreneurship activity. To conclude, this work contributes new perspectives towards a better understanding of high growth firms and growth policy. Policy implications are targeted towards transition and developing economies that have seen little representation in literature. The goal is to enable successful high growth policies across multiple levels.

The subject of this thesis is an analysis of factors influencing the growth rate of small and medium enterprises in Europe. The required data was collected from Amadeus database and processed into a panel dataset. Afterwards, the regression parameters of the selected explanatory variables were obtained by means of fixed effects models. Results showed that enterprise growth rate was most significantly influenced by the rate of R&D costs, specifically its annual change in relation to turnover. Growth is also positively influenced by firm's profitability, annual change in intangible assets value and nation's growth rate of GDP. A negative effect on growth connected with solvency ratio was also found, which is consistent with a proposition of the pecking order theory. Once again, validity of Gibrat's Law was confirmed when size variable turned out to be statistically insignificant and slightly negative in addition. Not surprisingly, privately held companies operating in Western Europe showed a bit higher propensity to faster growth than their counterparts.

This thesis is about firm dynamics, and relates to the size and growth-rate distribution of firms. As such, it consists of an introductory and four separate chapters. The first chapter concerns the size distribution of firms, the two subsequent chapters deal more specically with high-growth firms (HGFs), and the last chapter covers a related topic in distributional estimation theory. The first three chapters are empirically oriented, whereas the fourth chapter develops a statistical concept. / <p>QC 20130215</p>

Yes / This article investigates the impact of environmental collaboration on sustainable innovation and its impact on firm growth. The hypotheses are tested using data from 455 small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in Ghana. The findings from the study show that environmental collaboration positively relates to sustainable innovation and this relationship is moderated by environmental commitment. The results also show that sustainable innovation is positively associated with SME growth. Finally, the results suggest that sustainable innovation mediates the environmental collaboration‐SME growth relationship. The theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed.

隨著國內企業的成長，以及商業競爭的國際化，併購已成為企業在維持及增加成長幅度時考慮的主要策略之一。過往的文獻對於企業成長理論有相當多的研究，經理人在成長歷程中的角色也被深度討論。另一方面，許多學者針對併購的動機進行討論，其中又以綜效、經理人自利與過度自信經理人為最被廣泛認可的併購動機。 　　雖然過去已經有非常多文獻分別針對企業成長理論與併購動機理論深入研究，但少有文獻對於兩者的關係進行研究，尤其未有文獻對台灣企業的情況進行研究。為了理解台灣企業的成長與併購之間的關係，本研究以台灣2008年至2014年以台灣企業為主併企業之併購案作為研究樣本，藉由統計迴歸的量化研究，釐清企業成長之速度對於併購行為之影響，解釋企業併購機率、併購股數、國際化併購與成功機率等併購相關變數。 　　本研究分別以營業收入及資產總額來衡量企業成長，發現在兩種衡量方法下，企業成長越快的企業皆越可能進行併購。但營業收入成長越快的企業，越可能併購國外的企業；資產總額成長越快的企業，則是在併購時會購入越多標的企業之股票。結果顯示，企業成長確實會增加併購的機率，但若企業有不同的成長模式，也會導致併購行為上的差異。 / With the growing of firms in Taiwan and the internalization of commercial competition, merger and acquisition (M&A) have become one of the main strategies that firms consider when they want to keep growing. Previous studies have done a lot of research of firm growth and managers’ role on the path of growth. The antecedent of M&A has been discussed widely as well. Synergy, managerialism and hubris are the most recognized antecedents of M&A in these studies. Although there were a large number of studies concerning firm growth and antecedents of M&A, few focused on the relationship between them, especially none was about Taiwan’s situation. With the sample of M&A cases of Taiwanese firms from 2008 to 2014, this study examines the relationship between firm growth and antecedents of merger. This study uses regression model to analysis the impact of firm growth rate on M&A behavior. Furthermore, M&A related variables such as probability of M&A, equity bought, international M&A percentage and success rate are explained in this study. Two methods are used in this study to measure firm growth: sales revenue and total assets. The regression result shows that firms with higher growth rates are more likely to participate in M&A activities in both methods. While firms with higher sales growth tend to merge more foreign companies, firms with higher assets growth tend to buy more equity in M&As. To sum up, firm growth increase the probability of M&A activity. But different growth patterns can lead to variation of M&A behavior as well.

The topic of this thesis is economic dynamism. The five articles contribute to the literature on firm entry and firm growth. Studies are based on a dataset covering all Swedish limited liability firms between 1997 and 2010. The first article investigates conditions for firm entry in Sweden, distinguishing regular entrants from entrants that survive for at least two years, modelling the firm entry decision using count data models. While high income and a well-educated population had a positive effect, the effect was more important for surviving entrants. The second article uses a similar method, but focuses on wholesale industries and distinguishes between regular entry and in migration of firms, i.e. when an incumbent firm relocates its operations. Access to a university, many educated workers and low local taxes had positive effects. Better access to infrastructure had a strong positive effect on entrants, but it was smaller for in-migrating firms. The third article investigates if the industry context matters for whether Gibrat’s law holds, i.e. whether firm growth is independent of firm size. The law is found more likely to be rejected in industries with a high minimum efficient scale and a large number of firms located in metropolitan areas, but more likely to hold in industries with high market concentration and more group ownership. The fourth and fifth article contribute to the high-growth firms (HGFs) literature. In the fourth article it is examined whether the way HGFs are defined matters for the policy implications. It is found that the economic contributions of HGFs differ significantly depending on definition. Young firms are however more likely to be HGFs irrespective of definition. The fifth article considers the frequent argument that policymakers should target high-tech firms, i.e., firms with high R&amp;D intensity, because such firms are thought more likely to become HGFs. We examine this assumption by studying the industry distribution of HGFs. Results indicate that industries with high R&amp;D intensity, ceteris paribus, can be expected to have a lower share of HGFs than can industries with lower R&amp;D intensity. By contrast, we find that HGFs are overrepresented in service industries with a high share of human capital.