Organizational design configurations in the early stages of firm’s life cycle

Abstract

The liability of newness affirms that firms do face a higher risk of be ing selected out from their competitive environment more in the first years of their existence, than later (Stinchcombe, 1965; Henderson, 1999). The mai n reasons for the liability of newness are the problems of setting up an organizational structure and getting the new unit to work efficiently enough to keep pace with their competitors (Fritsch et al., 2006). Nevertheless, empirical studies about the survival rate of new firms mostly focus on suc h factors as: relationship with capital markets (Robb & Robinson, 2012) , expectations of the entrepreneur (Sarasvathy et al., 2013), background of the employees (Andersson & Klepper, 2013), industry, region and time effect s (Fritsch et al., 2006), and clusters role (Wennberg & Lindqvist, 2010) . Conversely, a thorough understanding on the role played by the organizational solutions firms adopt in the early stages of their life is still missing. Using the fsQCA methodology, this paper fills this gap by analyzin g the organizational configurations of those firms that have successfully overcome the liability of newness and have been able to grow.