The Growth of Small Businesses: Towards A Research Agenda
- 1 Baptist Bible College, United States
Abstract
Problem statement: The central objective of this study is to help define a framework for researching the growth of small businesses. Approach: By way of a literature review, the study evaluates current research approaches to small business growth organized around the "key factors" framework proposed which include elements drawn from the characteristics of the entrepreneur, the firm and the business strategy. Results: In the absence of a unified theory of small business growth, models and approaches used to explain small business growth are fragmented and wide-ranging. A consideration of the additional impact on this framework of the external environmental dimension can inject a necessary dynamic element into the research process that is well-placed to capture the process of firm growth, as opposed to the snapshot of firm growth that tends to dominate the existing empirical work. Conclusion: The study concludes that longitudinal and case-based methodologies are needed to develop our existing understanding of small firm growth behavior.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3844/ajebasp.2012.105.115
Copyright: © 2012 Akin Fadahunsi. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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Keywords
- Entrepreneurship
- business growth
- small business research
- small business development