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Guided by the proposed opportunity and resource integrative entrepreneurial growth model, the purpose of this paper is to explore how different opportunity type firms grow integrally and what the laws for different opportunity integration growth modes are.

A multiple case study on six firms in information and communication technologies industry in China is conducted.

Three types of entrepreneurial opportunities exist. These are identification type opportunity, discovery type opportunity, and creation type opportunity. Entrepreneurship among the three types of entrepreneurial opportunities operates under different laws. For each type of entrepreneurial opportunity, firms need to balance the two growth modes, namely, the opportunity identification and assessment/resource allocation mode and the opportunity utilization and resource identification/acquisition mode, in order to achieve a leveraging effect.

Vertical comparison is missing.

Firms need to balance the two growth modes, namely, opportunity identification and assessment and resource allocation mode and opportunity utilization and resource identification and acquisition mode, to achieve leverage effect.

This paper integrates system theory with entrepreneurship research and proposes the opportunity and resource integrative entrepreneurial growth model. This model is helpful, both in aiding firms to follow the laws for entrepreneurial opportunities and to identify entrepreneurial opportunities. The business model plays a vital role in entrepreneurship. Firms taking advantage of the Internet of Things are more likely to gain a competitive advantage and to achieve success in their entrepreneurial activities.

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 purpose of this paper is to discuss the process of entrepreneurial growth from the perspective of the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm and transaction cost theory (TCT) and to formulate propositions regarding the entrepreneurs’ decisional rules and structural elements in this process.

The argumentation draws upon three fields of academic research, namely, entrepreneurship studies on firm growth as well as strategic management and organization science studies on company scope and size (boundary). A systematic review of the literature was performed that combines the RBV and TCT to explain a firm’s boundary.

Three levels of entrepreneurial decisional rules in the process of growth were identified. The first level includes main decisional criteria. The second level approaches the structural elements of growth process, namely, its motives, rationale, mechanism and modes. The third level assumes evolutionary approach to decision making, namely, feedback relationships among transaction costs, governance and capabilities to create value from growth.

The paper broadens the early stream of research in the process of entrepreneurial growth. It contributes to explaining the way growth is realized, instead of identifying its predictors, which has dominated in to-date studies. The entrepreneurs’ decisional rules and choices in the process of expansion were suggested. Moreover, the integrated RBV-TCT approach was proposed as a theoretical background for studying this phenomenon.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of transnational entrepreneurs in growing born global firms, with a focus on the growth process facilitated by collaborative entry mode.

The author chose the solar photovoltaic industry as the empirical setting. This industry is a particularly good context for the study because many firms in this industry sell knowledge-intensive products internationally from their inception. The primary data consist of 32 in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs, industry association representatives, research institute scholars, and professional service firms.

The study highlights the importance of transnational entrepreneurs who develop born global firms to maturity by using their technological knowledge, international connections, and bicultural advantages to navigate and leverage institutional complexity. Collaborative entry mode with distributors enables born global firms’ high growth rapidly, whereas transnational entrepreneurs play a central role in building and expanding international network. Initial public offering in overseas stock exchange accelerates the high growth trajectory of born global firm by signalling its maturity.

The author took a process perspective by examining the growth and maturity of born global firms by collaborative partnership; the author’s focus on the role of transnational entrepreneurs highlighted entrepreneurs’ sensitivity to institutional complexity along the growth trajectory.

The author recommends both incumbent and entrepreneurial firms in developed economies collaborate with transnational entrepreneurs in various business areas. Industry firms may be able to cooperate on product and marketing development, and professional service firms can offer services to expand born global firms further, because transnational entrepreneurs follow the global “rules of the game”.

The author shed important light on the role of transnational entrepreneurs throughout the growth of born global firms via collaborative entry mode. Furthermore, the author develops a multilevel framework for analysing the combined influence of transnational entrepreneur and institutional complexity on the growth of born global firm.

Diversification is one of the most promising strategies for tourism firms, the entry mode choice being an essential decision. For this reason, this paper seeks to analyze the entry mode into new business areas made by Spanish tourism firms in their diversification process. It aims to focus on firm factors drawn on the resource‐based view (RBV) to examine issues such as the link between the new business and the company's original one, its diversifying experience, the reasons for diversifying and the impact of the choice of internal growth, external growth or cooperation agreements. The effects of a fit between the entry mode and the type of diversification on profitability are also considered.

From a mail survey to Spanish tourism firms 94 entries into new business areas were obtained and a multinomial logit regression applied.

The results show that both the diversifying experience and the reasons behind the decision to diversify influence the entry mode and support the existence of a link between the above‐mentioned fit and firm profitability.

The paper contributes to providing new empirical evidence about entry mode decisions, with the innovation that it has focused on a group of enterprises, those belonging to the Spanish tourism sector, which had traditionally received less attention within this field of research.

This paper investigates the role of the founder CEO and board independence in shaping the way in which Indian and Italian family firms (FFs) pursue international growth via two modes, that is exports and FDI. This article claims that country's context matters in determining the relationship between the presence of the founder CEO and FFs' extent of exports and extent of FDI. Further, this article examines the moderating role of board independence on the above-mentioned founder CEO–FF's international growth relationship.

Using a fixed-effect panel data method, this article tests the hypotheses on a sample of 1,275 Indian FF-year observations and 705 Italian FF-year observations over the period 2008–2015.

This article reveals that the presence of a founder CEO is positively associated with the extent of exports but negatively associated with the extent of FDI in Italian firms. However, in case of Indian firms, the presence of the founder CEO is negatively associated with the extent of exports as well as with the extent of FDI. This founder CEO's influence on the firm's international growth is mitigated by the presence of an independent board in Italian firms; however, this moderation is not significant in the case of Indian firms.

It is important to capture heterogeneity within family firms and across institutional contexts while studying family firms' international growth. Further, it is important for international business scholars to theorize for different modes of international growth because challenges faced in expansion via exports are different from the challenges faced in expansion via FDI (foreign subsidiaries). Therefore, family firms leadership might prefer a certain mode of international growth.

The findings of the study imply that national culture and institutional context could play an important role in determining (a) Founder CEO's inclination towards FF's extent of exports and FDI as well as (b) the effectiveness of an independent board in mitigating founder CEO's influence on FF's international growth.

This work is one of the very few studies that examines the impact of FF's heterogeneity and country heterogeneity on two modes of international growth, namely exports and FDI, in the Indian and Italian contexts. Further, this work provides empirical evidence on the independent board's role in mitigating founder CEO's influence in decision making in the case of Italian firms. Extant literature expects an independent board to encourage FFs' international growth both via exports and FDI; this study shows that independent boards could reduce the founder CEO's inclination towards exports and mitigate founder CEO's influence on the decision making; however, this mitigation effect is highly context dependent.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the differences in growth strategies – domestic and international – of manufacturing and service firms. Hardly any literature exists that empirically investigates the differences on account of the distinctive characteristics of goods and services, and such studies rarely draw from the operations management field.

Multiple analysis of variance is used to analyze longitudinal data from multiple secondary sources.

Mixed services, such as banks, focus more on domestic growth and less on international growth. Manufacturers, such as chemical firms, focus more on international activities as compared to domestic activities. Mixed service firms seem to prefer collaborative approaches, whereas goods producers prefer wholly owned ventures.

The data collection methodology applied in this study may be applicable to many other topics of operations management. Future researchers may examine internationalization of services from front and back office perspectives, and compare information‐processing, possession‐processing, and people‐processing services in their choices of mode of entry and resultant performance differences.

The findings are relevant for developing operations strategy, including location alternatives, for both manufacturing and service firms as different nations become a part of the global village. Appropriate modes of entry in an international arena for both service and manufacturing firms are identified.

A cross‐functional study that uses longitudinal data from secondary sources in an innovative way with significant implications for operations managers and researchers.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of acquisition and organic growth on the operating efficiency and total factor productivity change of retailing networks.

The assessment uses low-frequency data of newly opened stores and acquired stores of a large supermarket (S/M) network in Athens, for a period (financial year 2014) where the network began to refocus on its organic growth after a two-year period of deep recession (financial years 2012–2013). To evaluate the performance effects of both strategies, the authors employ the innovative benchmarking tool of bootstrap data envelopment analysis (DEA) for measuring operational efficiency and the Malmquist productivity index DEA approach for measuring productivity change over time.

The short-run evidence indicates that compared to organic growth, acquisitions lead to lower operating efficiency. However, this difference gradually converges over time as acquired stores show a higher rate of productivity compared to newly opened stores. The authors interpret this as a result of the smooth integration of the acquired chain store into the organizational structure of the existing store network given their significant similarities in terms of products and customers.

The authors inform managers of store chains that during the process of organic growth, a general improvement in efficiency takes place while in the case of acquisitions, the required post-acquisition streamlining actions cause a short delay on the realization of efficiency gains. Therefore, managers should not take it for granted that acquisitions cause a long-term decrease in efficiency.

The study contributes to the literature on growth strategies and retailing performance in general, by offering new evidence regarding the comparative effect of the horizontal growth modes on the efficiency of store chains.

The purpose of this paper is to examine business growth and explore the “growth mode” among 24 women entrepreneurs participating in a Nordic research, development and networking programme.

A longitudinal design made it possible to follow entrepreneurial growth as an unfolding and emerging research process with a methodology inductive in nature and driven by empirical findings. The analysis is structured following established procedures for inductive, theory-building research, using guidelines for constant comparison techniques and working recursively between the data and the emerging theory.

Two processes were found important to understand the women entrepreneurs’ growth mode. The first is interpreted as intentionally driven and relates to the women’s achievement of expanding their knowledge reservoir; the other is non-intentionally driven and a result of uncontrolled network responses. The latter unfolded as a movement towards a preferable macro-actor status for some of the entrepreneurs.

The study calls attention to relevant knowledge preferable to entrepreneurs who face challenges when trying to grow their businesses. The political implications of this study relate to the importance of awareness among governmental organizations and municipal business advisers regarding the effects of entrepreneurial networking.

This study provides an empirically rigorous insight into the processes of entrepreneurial growth. The findings led the authors to develop a conceptual model for business growth, which contributes to the recent stream of literature on how new businesses are growing.