Firm growth and profitability: The role of age and size in shifts between growth–profitability configurations

To investigate the routes toward profitable growth, this study partially replicates and extends work of Davidsson et al. (2009) on firm growth–profitability dynamics with multi-industry data over 66,000 Finnish firms. The results support prior findings initial profitability being more important than growth for achieving high performance in both dimensions. Additional investigations role age size reveal further interesting dynamics: Very small young firms face fewer risks from growing at a low level other firms, benefits future depend firm's current profitability. advance understanding reasons consequences different modes (i.e., vs. non-profitable) growth.