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Cited by 573

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 112 of the 112 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

A Behavioral Theory of Firm Growth: Sequential Attention to Size and Performance Goals

Greve, Henrich R.·2008·Academy of Management Journal

Abstract

According to the behavioral theory of the firm, managers pay sequential attention to goals and apply aspiration levels to each goal. Although many goals have been proposed for organizations, research has so far concentrated on profitability. Here it is proposed that managers form an aspiration level for size through social comparison. This proposal leads to predictions on how performance and size goals jointly affect growth. Supporting this sequential attention hypothesis, evidence from the general insurance industry shows that firms grow more when they are below the aspiration level for size, especially when performance goals are satisfied.

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Metadata

Authors
Greve, H. R.
Venue
Academy of Management Journal
Published
2008-06
Volume
51
Issue
3
Pages
476-494
ISSN
  • 0001-4273 (ISSN-L)
  • 1948-0989
OpenAlex
W1989352474
Cited by
573
References
112
FWCI
35.64
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: A Behavioral Theory of Firm Growth: Sequential Attention to Size and Performance Goals. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.5465/amj.2008.32625975
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Greve, H. R. (2008). A Behavioral Theory of Firm Growth: Sequential Attention to Size and Performance Goals. Academy of Management Journal. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2008.32625975

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.