Competencies, Market Knowledge, and Size: How Gazelles Grow Throughout Recessions

Abstract: The purpose of this thesis is to find out how small successful companies; "gazelles", achieve sustainable growth throughout a recession. We (a) search for important factors, (b) find theoretical explanations for these factors, and (c) anchor our explanations to a selection of cases to further explain how and why these factors are important during a recession. We find six likely explanations for why size, competencies, and market knowledge are important success factors for gazelles during a recession. (1) Company size enables competition for bigger projects; (2) Company size provides slack resources making the company more adaptable to change; (3) Human capital becomes an important source of differentiation; (4) Employees provide a sustainable competitive advantage difficult for competition to mimic; (5) Market knowledge provides an understanding of the environment which enables strategic fit; (6) Market knowledge increases the value the company is able to deliver to customers.We also find three explanations for how our success factors can be established: (1) Increased company size allows an increased focus on employees' core competencies; (2) Dedicated recruitment strategy is the primary source of capturing appropriate competencies; (3) Active collection of customer information builds market knowledge. Our findings bridges the gap between theories about gazelles and theories about recessions, supported by a model that clarifies the connections between the success factors of gazelles explaining both how they can be achieved and why they are important.