Purpose – This review investigates the extent and content of research into rural firm growth, and identifies and describes various approaches to studying firm growth. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is guided by the systematic literature review framework which, combined with a qualitative assessment, ensures a rigorous review. An initial set of 200 peer reviewed articles was included in the review. During the quality assessment stage this set was reduced to 50 articles which were analysed in depth. Findings – Three approaches to firm growth are identified and explored, focusing on the output, process and context of firm growth. The results further indicate increasing interest in rural firm growth and identify six themes constituting the research field. Originality/value – Firm growth is advocated as a solution to development challenges, especially in rural settings. However, the firm growth literature is dominated by outcome-based research, often focused on technology-based businesses in dynamic urban regions, whose results are not easily transferable to rural contexts. This review contributes by mapping the current state of knowledge in the field, by articulating and discussing taken-for-granted assumptions with regard to firm growth and by identifying three approaches to firm growth, of which the context approach is the least common but which may prove valuable to further increase in the understanding of rural firm growth.

Contrary to a simple model of small firm growth where increased inputs produce greater outputs, we consider growth is a complex and difficult process. Accordingly, the paper is concerned with how small firms grow, especially how they make sense of the growth process. We collected narratives of the experiences of small firm growth in an extended case study to draw out how growth is understood and managed. We saw how owners became entangled in the process of growing, especially where a change in one aspect led to problems in other dimensions of growth. Their narratives were about trying to make sense, and give some sense to the complexity of growth and some direction to what they should manage. We identified a repertoire of narrative forms: Growth is understood through output indicators, growth is treated as the internal development of the firm and finally, growth is taken to be inevitable-a necessity to which the firm has to conform. These illustrate how growth can be understood as processes of growing, bound up in the context, created in space and time, and contingent on how growth is understood and experienced. Far from a smooth trajectory, enacting growth reflects the experience of the moment, it is shaped by reactions rather than strategy and it is messy rather than ordered. This study contributes to the literature by complementing the functionalist and output oriented view by understanding firm growth as a social phenomenon constructed and reconstructed in the interactions between people and experiences of context.

This study combines the concept of trigger points, events preceding bursts of growth, with a linguistic approach to show how firm growth unfolds through a process of translation. By marrying theories and methods rooted in the linguistic turn with firm growth theories, this study brings new insights on growth contributing to both the advancement of the trigger point concept and the wider understanding of entrepreneurial activities as complex and contextually bound processes dependent on human interaction. In doing so, the study also adheres to the current demand for advancing firm growth theory by relaxing the outcome-focussed approach and static life-cycle paradigm, and complementing it with alternative theoretical and methodological perspectives.

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