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The purpose of this study is to explore how new firms enter a new industry and which structure will support survival. Essentially, the study examines the extent to which new firms choose to be broad with regard to the industry supply chain and deep with regard to their market presence. Based on these two structural decisions, each one is examined independently and in conjunction to discover which aspects support survival.

A quantitative approach was adopted, consisting of using data supplied by the state of Colorado. More specifically, the study draws on empirical data that identifies which license type (grower, manufacturer and retailer) each firm chose to get and how many retail outlets the firm chose to operate.

The findings reveal that firms that cover the breadth of the supply chain are twice as likely to survive, while a broad market presence increases the risk of exit by 2.5 times. When the two factors were combined, it was firms with broad integration and deep market presence that had the highest chance of survival, as opposed to firms with intuition. A deep market presence seemed to accentuate the effect of integration, increasing the risk when the firm was not integrated, while increasing the survival rate when the firm was integrated.

This industry is quite new and afforded a unique opportunity to examine the impact of firm structure on survival. However, it may not be generalizable to other industries.

The present analysis argues that firms must adopt a holistic approach to their firm structure, because there are combinatorial effects at play. That is, while one specific strategy may increase survival, other strategies may impact firm survival. Examining and understanding the interplay of firm decisions are critical for firm survival.

Because of the lack of the formation of new industries, the authors’ understanding of the impact of firm structure on survival is limited. This unique context afforded the opportunity to empirically examine how firms can increase their chance of survival based on two aspects of firm structure: the breadth of the supply chain and the depth of the firm’s market presence.

This paper explores how two understudied characteristics of a firm's product portfolio, namely, aging of products and (non)innovativeness of products, affect firm survival. The influence of these product portfolio characteristics on organizational mortality can be observed both at the firm and at the industry levels. Paradoxically, the portfolio's influence at the firm and at the industry levels may go in opposite directions. Specifically, I predict that portfolios with aging products make their firms weaker competitors and survivors. However by weakening these firms, “aging” portfolios reduce competitive pressures at the industry level and, therefore, improve firm survival indirectly by changing industry vital rates. In contrast, firms with innovative product portfolios should be stronger survivors. At the same time, they are likely to intensify competition in the industry and, as a result, diminish survival chances of all firms, including those with innovative products. The analyses of all firms’ product portfolios in the worldwide optical disk drive industry, 1983–1999, support these predictions.

In the corporate world, there is no certainty of survival. This research aims to identify firm-level factors that increase or decrease a firm's probability of exit and survival.

The study examines 153 listed textile sector firms in Pakistan over a 10-year period from 2009 to 2018, comprising 1,413 observations. The semi-parametric Cox regression model is used to process the results.

The study finds that larger and exporting firms are more likely to survive, while those with a high ratio of fixed assets to total assets, high expenditure on advertising and variable costs are less likely to survive. The relationship between age and firm survival is inconclusive.

Adaptability to the external environment provides a competitive advantage that is crucial for textile firms to reduce their chances of exit. The research is valuable for strategic managers and policymakers to identify focus areas to prevent firm exit.

This study supports the active learning theory, which suggests that new entrants in the textile sector of Pakistan should focus on becoming active market players, increasing efficiency and reducing variable costs to survive.

Economy-wide crises create major challenges for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Existing studies emphasize the crucial role of contrasting behavioral strategies, effectuation and causation in SMEs' adaptation to crisis conditions. Yet, prior literature concentrated predominantly on exploring the impact of effectuation and causation on firm performance rather than survival. The authors present and empirically test a theoretical model explaining how behavioral strategies affect SME survival during an economy-wide crisis under different levels of environmental dynamism.

The authors propose a theoretical framework based on the combination of the effectuation literature and the emerging variance-based perspective on entrepreneurial actions. The theoretical model is then tested using a sample of Russian SMEs during a period of economic adversity and recovery (2015–2019).

The empirical results reveal that causation reduces the probability of firm survival in dynamic environments, while effectuation increases the chance of survival irrespective of the state of the environment. In a nutshell, the study provides evidence that the effectuation logic serves a viable way for SMEs to increase the chances of survival through the economic shock and subsequent recovery period.

For the first time in the literature, the authors demonstrate the role of behavioral strategy (effectual and causal) as a crucial antecedent of SME survival in the short and medium term, particularly during an economy-wide downturn. Furthermore, the study demonstrates the power of variability-based theorizing for explaining and predicting the survival/failure implications of entrepreneurial actions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship among firm characteristics, innovation, financial resilience and survival of financial institutions in Uganda.

This paper employs a cross-sectional research design, and responses from 143 officers of 40 financial institutions are analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. The authors used ordinary least squares regression in testing the hypotheses.

The authors find that firm characteristics of size, age, innovation and financial resilience have a predictive force on survival of public interest firms such as financial institutions.

The implication drawn here is that a combination of firm characteristics, firm innovation and financial resilience explains a significant contribution in the survival chances of financial institutions. However, as much as firm characteristics and financial resilience are significant, innovation explains more of the variances in financial institutions’ going concern appropriateness.

This paper adds to the limited financial institutions literature and provides the first empirical evidence of the efficacy of innovation and financial resilience on financial institutions survival. The auditing profession could consider more seriously the innovation activities and financial resilience of financial institutions in their test for the going concern assumption of such firms.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of the control-ownership wedge of controlling shareholders (excess control) on the survival of French initial public offerings (IPOs).

This paper studies a large sample of 434 French IPOs. The empirical analysis uses the Cox proportional hazard and accelerated-failure-time models. Data are manually gathered from IPO prospectuses.

The findings support a positive relation between the control-ownership wedge and IPO survival time, indicating that survival is more likely in firms with high excess control levels. This result is consistent with the view that controlling shareholders with a large control-ownership wedge have incentives to preserve their private benefits of control by increasing firm survival chances. The findings also show that older IPOs are more likely to survive, while riskier and underpriced IPOs are more likely to delist.

The results provide a better understanding of the role of excess control in IPO survival. They also enrich the debate on the efficiency of the one-share-one-vote rule.

The research provides new insights into the role of agency conflicts in IPO survivability. In particular, it explores the effect of dominant shareholders with a control-ownership wedge on survival time.

Looking back on the last 12 years, the whole planet went through two major economic crises (2008 and 2019), which both had a profound impact on the survival of businesses. The present study aims to develop and empirically test a conceptual framework that investigates the factors that have an influence on firm survival. More specifically, the study proposes a three-dimensional framework that includes performance drivers (utilizing resource-based view [RBV] factors), performance measures and the measurement of firm survival. Such a multi-dimensional approach has very rarely been explored in the existing literature.

A thorough literature review revealed gaps in the literature and offered the basis for developing the proposed conceptual framework of the study. Its empirical examination (hypothesis testing) was conducted with the use of a newly developed structured questionnaire that was distributed to a group of Greek manufacturing organizations (the final sample consists of 364 manufacturing companies). Empirical data were analyzed using the “structural equation modeling” (SEM) technique (multivariate analysis) and other similar techniques (i.e. exploratory factor analysis and analysis of variance). The study is empirical (based on primary data), explanatory (examines cause and effect relationships), deductive (tests research hypotheses) and quantitative (includes the analysis of quantitative data collected with the use of a structured questionnaire).

On the one hand, empirical results point out that “manufacturing-marketing alignment,” “manufacturing capabilities,” “structural configuration” and “business performance under crisis” have the most significant impact and on short-term survival (current situation). On the other hand, “competitive advantage” and “business performance under crisis” have the most significant impact on long-term survival (future situation). Focusing on RBV factors, only “structural configuration” and “manufacturing capabilities” directly affect short-term survival, while “manufacturing–marketing alignment” has an indirect effect on the same factor. Then again, all RBV factors indirectly affect long-term survival. Also, it is confirmed that short-term survival strongly affects long-term survival.

The present study contributes to the debate concerning the antecedents of firm survival, since current empirical findings are quite inconsistent. Specifically, crucial performance drivers and other measures are incorporated into an original model, which reveals their synergies and their impact on the dynamic dimensions of firm survival. Additionally, it enhances the stream of research that investigates firm survival under crisis since very few similar empirical studies have been conducted. Finally, firm survival is not measured as a static concept but rather as a dynamic one (firm survival – current situation and firm survival – future situation). Overall, the final model can explain 35.2% of the variance in “firm survival – current situation” and 46.3% of the variance in “firm survival – future situation.”

Despite the growing importance of young, entrepreneurial ventures in modern economic systems, many such ventures fail quite early in their lifecycles. While both evolutionary theory and organizational learning theory yield important insights for the literature on young venture survival, questions remain as to why ventures facing similar environments experience differential rates of survival. In response, I propose a theory of entrepreneurial agency – defined as the emergence and/or transformation of firms, markets, industries governed by the evolving interaction of temporally situated, intentional strategic action with a malleable external environment – to complement prevailing viewpoints on the causes of young venture survival. My central thesis in this chapter is that to develop more comprehensive explanations of differential survival rates, a theory of entrepreneurial agency – illuminating the transformative potential of entrepreneurial action – is necessary to complement evolutionary perspectives in the literature on firm survival. With this objective in mind, I construct a theoretical model linking diverse perspectives on the duality of human agency and theories of environmental selection, and offer several theoretical and empirical suggestions to guide future research.

Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises are the live wire of construction industry in developing countries. These classes of establishments are most affected by economic contraction and turmoil, thus affecting their performance and survivability. Hence, the purpose of this study is to investigate and prioritize the survival determinants of construction consulting organization during economic contraction in Nigeria using quantity surveying firms as a focal point.

The study adopted the descriptive-survey design and quantitative data were collected through questionnaire purposely administered to quantity surveying firms in the Southwestern part of Nigeria. The data obtained from 99 quantity surveying firms on survival determinants were analysed using various statistical analysis such as mean score, standard deviation, Mann–Whitney U test, Kruskal–Wallis H test, and so on. Principal component analysis was used to identify the principal components of survival determinants, while the factors were prioritized using fuzzy synthetic evaluation (FSE).

The result of the analysis reveals eight factors that significantly determines the survival of firms during the period of economic contraction. Furthermore, the eight grouped factors were prioritized accordingly namely firm's innovation and diversification, ownership structure and networking, education level and management skills, and so on.

This study investigated the survival determinants of quantity surveying firms and prioritized it with the opinions of principal partners in quantity surveying establishments. As against obtaining large survey responses from all quantity surveyors in the study area that may not have practical experience of managing firms, the limited responses received provide valid basis to broaden the horizon of professionals and other stakeholders on the key determinants for firms to survive economic turmoil.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge by providing information on prioritized factors that must be considered in an appropriate order by quantity surveying firms to survive economic contraction.

This study examines the survival probability of the firms during the COVID-19 pandemic and identifies the effects of pandemic-era business strategies on firm survival across sectors and sizes.

This study combines World Bank Enterprise Survey data with three consecutive follow-up COVID-19 survey data. The COVID-19 surveys are the follow-up surveys of WBES, and they are done at different points of time during the pandemic. Both WBES and COVID-19 surveys follow the same sampling methods, and the data are merged based on the unique id number of the firms. The data covers 12,551 firms from 21 countries in different regions such as Africa, Latin America, Central Asia and the Middle East. The study applies Kaplan–Meier estimate to analyze the survival probability of the firms across sectors and sizes. The study then uses Cox non-parametric regression model to identify the effect of business strategies on the survival of the firms during the pandemic. The robustness of the Cox model is checked using the multilevel parametric regression model.

The study's findings suggest that a firm's survival probability decreases during the pandemic era. Manufacturing firms have a higher survival probability than service firms, whereas SMEs have a higher survival probability than large firms. During the pandemic period, business strategies significantly boost the probability of firm survival, and their impacts differ among firm sectors and sizes. Several firm-specific factors affect firm survival in different magnitudes and signs. Except in a few cases, the findings also indicate that one strategy positively moderates the influence of another strategy on firm survival during a pandemic.

COVID-19 pandemic has drastically affected the business across the globe. Firms adopted new business processes and strategies to face the challenges created by the pandemic. The critical research question is whether these pandemic-era business strategies ensure firms' survival. This study attempts to identify the effects of these business strategies on firms' survival, focusing on a comprehensive firm-level data set that includes firms from different sectors and sizes of countries from various regions.