Confronting Theories of Firm Growth in Light of Degrees-of-Freedom Analysis

This article aims to confront four theories of firm growth – Optimum Firm Size, Stage Theory of Growth, The Theory of the Growth of the Firm and Dynamic Capabilities – with empirical data derived from a backward-looking longitudinal qualitative case of the growth trajectory of a Brazilian capital goods firm. To do so, we employed Degree of Freedom-Analysis for data analysis. This technique aims to test the empirical strengths of competing theories using statistical tests, in particular Chi-square test. Our results suggest that none of the four theories fully explained the growth of the firm we chose as empirical case. Nevertheless, Dynamic Capabilities was regarded as providing a more satisfactory explanatory power.

Bibliographic Details

Main Authors:	Rezende,Sérgio Fernando Loureiro, Salera,Ricardo, Castro,José Márcio de
Format:	Digital revista
Language:	English
Published:	Escola de Administração da Universidade Federal da Bahia 2015
Online Access:	http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1984-92302015000300385
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!