A Multidimensional Model of Venture Growth

An integrated model of venture growth isdeveloped based on management theory, organizational behavior theory,organization theory, and entrepreneurship models. The model is tested by gathering responses from 307 companies from the architectural wood working industry. Five research domains are identified as antecedents to venture performance: personality traits and general motives, personal competencies, situationally specific motivation, competitive strategies, and the business environment. Goals of the research are: (1) to test whether a multi-level model that sampled relevant concepts from individual, organizational, and environmental domains would predict firm performance successfully; (2) to test whether each domainwould contribute something to the prediction, and (3) to explore alternativeforms of the relationship among the domains and performance. Findings indicate that individual, organizational, and environmental research domains predict venture growth better when the connection of complex indirect relationships among them is included than when only multiple simultaneous direct effects are studied. In addition, it is found that all the domains enter into the prediction of venture growth when these total effects are considered, indicating that venture growth cannot be adequately explained from a single perspective. (JSD)