dissertation in pdf-format - Aalto-yliopisto

2 Literature review and conceptual framework
Table 2: Politico-economic theories (alphabetically ordered), and their conceptions of
firms’ growth sources, triggers and barriers, expected growth paths and differences in
growth rates (Coates, 1999).
All these politico-economic theories seem to provide useful concepts for
exploring the sources of firms’ growth and factors affecting their
performance. However, contemporary understanding of performance is
more multidimensional, complex and more specific than the understanding
offered by classical economic perspectives. Notably, the importance of the
roles of single actors such as entrepreneurs, managers and owners of
companies, the motives of these actors, resources, entrepreneurial actions,
development paths and context have all been acknowledged more strongly
in recent discussion of firms’ performance (Barney, 1991; Barringer et al.,
2005; Bhide, 2000; Chetty and Campbell-Hunt, 2003; Daviddson et al.,
2009; Dobbs and Hamilton, 2006; Garnsey et al., 2006, Gibb and Davies,
1990; Kirby, 2005; Penrose, 1995; Storey, 1994).
The roles and motives of single actors, such as owners, managers and
entrepreneurs, resources, loci of control and strategic management have
been emphasised as drivers of firms’ performance (McClelland, 1961;
Rotter, 1966; Penrose, 1959; Young, 1961). McClelland’s (1961) theory of the
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