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The purpose of this paper is to show how stages of growth models have been applied to a number of organizational phenomena in management research. One class of models consists of maturity models for IT outsourcing relationships. There is a need for an improved theoretical foundation for stage models.

Based on a literature review of theory research as well as stage research, a stage of growth theory is proposed in this paper. Also, a procedure for stages of growth modeling is suggested.

A theoretical foundation for stages of growth models enables trust worthier modeling.

Future research modeling organizational phenomena can follow the suggested modeling procedure. This paper can be used in teaching by discussing industrial management phenomena along stages of growth by applying dominant problems and benchmark variables.

In strategy work, this paper helps in providing a framework for assessing current stage as well as determining future strategic direction for an industrial organization.

Theory development in this paper includes four important propositions on which this theory is based.

This article provides a detailed investigation of how Lewis revisited classical and Marxian concepts such as productive/unproductive labor, economic surplus, subsistence wages, reserve army, and capital accumulation in his investigation of economic development. The Lewis 1954 development model is compared to other models advanced at the time by Harrod, Domar, Swan, Kaldor, Solow, von Neumann, Nurkse, Rosenstein-Rodan, Myint, and others. Lewis applied the notion of economic duality to open and closed economies.

To overcome the errors of the exogenous growth theories of the past, the new growth theories, currently in vogue, attempt to incorporate technological change as endogenous to the growth process. While making a commendable effort to see into that black box of technological change, these so‐called new growth theories are also subject to question and critique on a variety of grounds. One of these is that the new growth theories are not really that new. Another area of concern relates to their empirical relevancy. This is especially evident in assessing the practical use of the new growth theories in terms of problem identification and policy resolution. Other problem areas relate to issues of conceptual clarity and underlying assumptions. By assuming the process of economic growth to be synonymous with that of economic development the result is to avoid the prerequisite structural transformation inherent in the dynamics of culture evolution. Culture evolution in turn is predicated upon technological advance conceptualized as both material and social technology. It is argued in this paper that an explanation as to why technology is endogenous to the processes of growth and economic development is best served vis‐à‐vis an analysis of the dynamics of culture evolution.

This chapter provides an alternative interpretation of the emergence of the “Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans” growth model, a framework which, alongside the overlapping generation model, is the dominant approach in today’s macroeconomics. By focusing on the role Paul Samuelson played through the works he developed in the turnpike literature, the author’s goal is to provide a more accurate history of growth theory of the 1940–1960s, one which started before Solow (1956) but never had him as a central reference. Inspired by John von Neumann’s famous 1945 article, Samuelson wrote his first turnpike paper by trying to conjecture an alternative optimal growth path (Samuelson, 1949 [1966]). In the 1960s, after reformulating the intertemporal utility model presented in Ramsey (1928), Samuelson began to propound it as a representative agent model. Through Samuelson’s interactions with colleagues and PhD students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and given his standing in the profession, he encouraged a broader use of that device in macroeconomics, particularly, in growth theory. With the publication of Samuelson (1965), Tjalling Koopmans and Lionel McKenzie rewrote their own articles in order to account for the new approach. This work complements a recently written account on growth theory by Assaf and Duarte (2018).

This paper introduces a hitherto unpublished 1970 paper written by Lauchlin Currie (1902–1993) on Paul Rosenstein Rodan’s famous 1943 paper on the “Big Push” which led to the balanced-unbalanced growth debate to which Albert Hirschman (1915–2012) was an important contributor. Both Currie and Hirschman had been key economic advisers to the Colombian government, and their respective views on development planning are contrasted. In particular, it is shown how Currie’s 1970 paper illuminates the theory behind the 1971–1974 national plan for Colombia that he prepared and helped deliver; and how the related institutional innovations have had an enduring impact on Colombia’s recent economic history.

Societies highly value economic growth because economic growth results in increase in societal standards of living. This paper addresses the issue of why economies grow and what public policy makers should favor in order to increase economic growth.

This paper reviews and contrasts the two major, rival ways to account for economic growth: the neoclassical model, which maintains that growth results from increases in investment, and the dynamic competition model, which maintains that growth results from the innovations that stem from the process of competition.

The paper finds that the dynamic‐competition model, as represented by resource‐advantage (R‐A) theory, best explains economic growth.

Public policy should focus on promoting R‐A competition in order to foster economic growth.

This issue of which approach best accounts for economic growth is important because the two approaches imply very different decisions in the public policy arena.

The paper provides a detailed historical account of Douglass C. North's early intellectual contributions and analytical developments in pursuing a Grand Theory for why some countries are rich and others poor.

The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.

The systematic, continuous and profound attempt to answer the Smithian social coordination problem shaped North's journey from being a young serious Marxist to becoming one of the founders of New Institutional Economics. In the process, he was converted in the early 1950s into a rigid neoclassical economist, being one of the leaders in promoting New Economic History. The success of the cliometric revolution exposed the frailties of the movement itself, namely, the limitations of neoclassical economic theory to explain economic growth and social change. Incorporating transaction costs, the institutional framework in which property rights and contracts are measured, defined and enforced assumes a prominent role in explaining economic performance.

In the early 1970s, North adopted a naive theory of institutions and property rights still grounded in neoclassical assumptions. Institutional and organizational analysis is modeled as a social maximizing efficient equilibrium outcome. However, the increasing tension between the neoclassical theoretical apparatus and its failure to account for contrasting political and institutional structures, diverging economic paths and social change propelled the modification of its assumptions and progressive conceptual innovation. In the later 1970s and early 1980s, North abandoned the efficiency view and gradually became more critical of the objective rationality postulate. In this intellectual movement, North's avant-garde research program contributed significantly to the creation of New Institutional Economics.

Penrose’s argument regarding the managerial constraint on continual expansion over two consecutive periods is termed the “Penrose effect,” a relatively less investigated premise in Penrose’s growth theory. The purpose of this paper is to empirically re-examine the Penrose effect from the perspective of upper echelons theory and investigated how top management team (TMT) composition influences the continual growth of a firm.

This study empirically tested the hypotheses based on a sample of listed manufacturing firms operating in Taiwan, a newly industrialized economy in the Asia–Pacific region. Moderated hierarchical regression analyses were applied to test hypotheses.

The empirical results suggest that low TMT diversity (in terms of educational, functional and team tenure diversity) is likely to engender a situation in which the Penrose effect might occur. Additionally, the results indicate that the proportion of functional executives plays a significant role in influencing the growth trend over two consecutive periods and may soften the impact of the Penrose effect.

This paper suggests that appropriate structuring of TMTs and appropriate management of their members’ backgrounds and team tenure diversity can help firms overcome the Penrose effect and grow continually. Furthermore, the proportion of functional executives in a TMT is influential.

This paper uniquely contributes to the theoretical and empirical development of Penrose’s growth theory, upper echelons theory and resource-based view concerning managerial resources.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework to explain the firm growth process based on an integration and extension, through empirical research, of Penrose’s theory of the growth of the firm and the resource-based view. Theoretical development within the firm growth literature has been noticeably limited. Firm growth studies use different theoretical bases and what is needed is integration of multiple theories and empirical testing of these to form a new conceptual framework capable of explaining the modern growth process fully.

The key perspectives are critically reviewed and integrated and empirical qualitative research is undertaken analysing the process of growth in two firms. Semi-structured interviews, participant observation and analysis of company documentation are utilised.

The key insight this research provides is detailed information with regard to which resources, mediators and outputs are vital to firm growth, how they need to be developed and why this is the case. The study shows that these act in a cyclical nature to enable firm growth and development.

These findings could be used by practitioners to determine which part of the conceptual framework requires the most amount of improvement and which are developed to an acceptable state, enabling them to make plans for the achievement of growth.

This research is able to reconceptualise two dominant theoretical perspectives resulting in the generation of a new firm growth framework, thereby addressing a distinct gap in the firm growth literature.