Behind the door to Narnia: A systematic review of high-growth firms management team

Tens of thousands of organizations ceased to exist due to tremendous events that hit the entire business world over the last three years. Nevertheless, there have been other enterprises – in traditional and emerging industries – that have uninterruptedly continued to generate astronomical performances, the so-called high-growth firms (HGFs), also known as ‘gazelles’. Their resilience has attracted growing attention from scholars worldwide interested in disentangling the mechanisms behind these fantastic ventures. Yet, still many questions are left unanswered on how HGFs are able to surf the challenging environments that characterized today’s business landscape. Consequently, this study is aimed to investigate and systematize the state-of-the-art scientific literature about HGFs with the scope to delineate what has been done until today and, therefore, highlight future research avenues. To do so, this study performed a bibliometric analysis and a literature review of 90 articles. The combined use of these two methods allowed the authors to investigate the research topic in depth, while capturing the wider picture of the evolution of knowledge. On the one hand, the bibliometric analysis identifies five research clusters: “strategy and performance”, “corporate governance and ownership”, “ambidexterity”, “entrepreneurial orientation, capabilities and motivation”, and “women-led HGFs”. On the other hand, the literature review allowed us to accurately systematize current literature about HGFs, to spot its limitations as well as to delineate future research avenues. The study offers an overview of the current knowledge on HGFs and it helps both scholars and practitioners to, respectively, develop this topic in entrepreneurship and management fields – by laying the foundations for future research – and summarizing the most important findings allowing a better management of this kind of entrepreneurial phenomenon.