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I test empirically the hypothesis that the monitoring role of the board of directors depends on the severity of the agency problems and the amount of information needed to monitor. I show that in high growth firms, where the agency conflicts are low and managers are likely to reveal more information to get advice, boards are more independent but less likely to monitor, while in low growth firms, boards are less likely to be independent, but the relationship between firm value and board independence is strong. Overall, boards become more independent but monitor less as firms’ growth opportunities increase, suggesting that managers trade off the amount of information released to the board to get a better advice and to mitigate the monitoring role of the board.

Despite a large and growing literature on the subject, little is understood about the phenomenon of small business growth. Specifically, the small business growth literature has often emphasized “why” opposed to “how” firms grow. This chapter sheds light on this black box of growth by investigating the phases of planning and implementation processes separately to explore the choice of strategic expansion modes. It examines a much under-researched firm category: declining small firms. Employing a three-year longitudinal study using a multi-case study method, we find that while growth approaches are typically contextually (industry) derived, formalized planning greatly affects implementation. Further, resources are the key mediating variable between formal planning and implementation – firms with slack resources will typically implement their contextually influenced planned growth course, and firms with inadequate resources will typically implement through interactive learning, which causes them to downscale the growth plans or exit the market (merger or sale).

The primary purpose of this chapter is to provide insight as to why some privately held small-to-medium sized firms (SMEs) have been able to outperform their peers in terms of their performance defined as revenue growth, profit growth, growth in number of employees and markets. Little is known about privately held firms and what drives their performance. The second purpose is to synthesize and provide clarity to the extant literature on rapid-growth SMEs (gazelles). The third purpose is to bring a unifying theoretical lens to the literature.

The research was conducted using elite interviews with 47 informants drawn from 21 rapid-growth, private companies. Qualitative methods were used to identify themes related to the strategies used by these firms to outperform their peers over a five-year period.

The study organizes and summarizes the extant literature on rapid-growth companies, provides support for some findings, and clarifies equivocal findings. It also suggests that early strategic choices made by the owners of private firms along with their attitudes and capabilities positioned the private firms for rapid growth. The Morgan and Hunt (1994) trust–commitment theory of relationship marketing emerged from the data as the model used most often by rapid-growth private firms and the one that best integrates the factors driving private firm performance. A modified, two-stage model appears to be warranted. The first stage focuses on respect for the value employees bring, and building their trust and commitment is an essential first step that subsequently drives the second stage of the model – building customer trust and commitment. While some of the outcomes are similar to those suggested by Morgan and Hunt, new outcomes (collaborative innovation, citizenship behaviors, sustained growth, and premium prices) also emerged as important outcomes in this study.

This study provides owners of private firms with insight on how to build and grow their firms in a rapid and sustainable fashion.

Little research has been undertaken on private firms. This study addresses this knowledge gap. The modified trust–commitment relationship marketing model that emerged from the data had not been utilized to date in the field of rapid-growth firms and it provides an integrating theory that explains the performance of rapid-growth private firms.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) promotes society, reduces risk, and encourages ethical business practices. Due to its relevance, we study how CSR influences firms' sustainable development. We analyze data from 427 New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)-listed firms from 2008 to 2022. The Refinitiv environmental and social score is used to measure CSR, whereas for firms' sustainable development we rely on corporate sustainable growth rate (SGR) and market-based metrics. The analysis employs various econometric techniques, including ordinary least square, fixed effect regression, two-stage least square, generalized method of moment, and simultaneous quantile regression. The results indicate that CSR has a positive and significant effect on firms' sustainable development across all models. This relationship supports the notion that socially responsible business can contribute to long-term financial sustainability in line with “stakeholder theory”, indicating that companies should accommodate the concerns of various stakeholders, including society and the environment, to achieve sustainable development. We evaluate how the conditional distributions of SGR and firms’ value are affected by CSR, categorizing them into high, moderate, and low regimes. The quantile regression estimates indicate that the effect of CSR is more pronounced at upper quantiles, followed by moderate and low regimes. These findings underscore the importance of considering CSR in assessing the SGR and enterprises market value. We also confirm that our results are robust under range of different econometrics' methods. Finally, we enlighten current literature, and our research has useful policy implications for management and investors.

The importance of leadership in the success of startups is widely recognized. Our study focuses on high-growth startups, which are venture capital (VC)-financed. So far, there is insufficient understanding, which leadership style founders and leaders of these startups deploy. Based on a Grounded Theory approach we derive a leadership framework from interviews with founder CEOs in Germany’s major startup city, Berlin. Our findings suggest that founder CEOs in high-growth, VC-funded startups heavily emphasize employee motivation, personnel development, performance orientation, and growth achievement in their leadership behavior. While our findings relate to a very specific and extreme type of firms, we propose that they are relevant for all kinds of companies as a pattern of a somewhat idealized leadership environment in relentless pursuit of innovation and growth.

This chapter elaborates on entrepreneurship in developed and developing countries and focuses on the optimization of entrepreneurial activities. Various scenarios are considered: independent functioning of the market, integration in the form of reorganization (mergers and acquisitions), integration in the form of clustering, and integration in the form of innovational networks and technological parks. The optimal structure of the integration processes and best-case scenarios for its implementation to accelerate the rate and increase the quality of economic growth are substantiated. The potential for uptake of integration processes in stimulating economic growth through entrepreneurship is determined by the level of institutionalization in an economy. In developed countries, all forms of company integration are characterized by the high level of institutionalization, which allows for their effective use for economic growth. Independent companies, mergers, and acquisitions restrain economic growth and reduce its quality, while clusters, technological parks, and innovational networks accelerate the rate of economic growth and increase its quality. In developing countries, integration processes in entrepreneurship have a different influence on economic growth and require further institutionalization.

Our focus on external growth and related competence development as a process required observing and jointly examining a large number of variables that influence growth processes and, in particular, the complex relationships among them (Huber & Van de Ven, 1995). The heterogeneity of the phenomenon requires rich and deep descriptions aimed at assessing the abstractions and generalizations that can be meaningfully attempted (Davidsson, 2005, p. 56).