Understanding Business Scaling, Its Process, and the Role of Context and Internationalization

Firms scaling, meaning rapid growth with efficient resource utilization, has become a critical priority in academic literature as well as in management practice. Scaling is not only central to firm performance but also vital for broader economic development, contributing to job creation, productivity gains, and the diffusion of innovation. Distinct from general firm growth, scaling refers to a firm’s ability to expand its outputs without proportional increases in inputs. Building on Penrose’s theory of growth, firm expansion generally requires a corresponding increase in resources to meet rising demand and seize new opportunities. Scaling, however, goes beyond just growth, showing how this growth is achieved. The literature on scaling still presents some conceptual ambiguity and an overly static, outcome-oriented view of scaling. Research tends to describe scaleups as defined by fixed resource profiles, neglecting the evidence that scaling can emerge under diverse conditions. Finally, the institutional environment remains underexplored, despite its critical influence on firms’ ability to scale and the mediating role of firm-level strategies. To address these limitations, this dissertation is structured around three interrelated chapters. The first chapter offers a systematic literature review of the nascent literature on scaling. By analyzing 74 peer‐reviewed studies, it clarifies related concepts such as scaling, scaleups, and scalability and synthesizes the dispersed evidence on enablers, challenges, strategies, risks, and outcomes, ultimately developing an integrative framework that clarifies variable relations and outlines directions for future research. The second chapter investigates how firms manage to achieve scaling under potentially unfavorable conditions. Drawing on a longitudinal multi-case study of Italian scaleups, it shows that scaling is not determined by a fixed set of assets but by the dynamic orchestration of available resources across different phases of growth. The paper shifts the perspective from what the list of resources should be to how resources and strategies can support firm scaling even with different resource settings. The third chapter moves the focus to the institutional environment and examines the impact of formal institutions in shaping firm scaling and the moderating effect of internationalization. Using firm-level data from multiple countries combined with country-level indicators, the study demonstrates that contextual conditions significantly influence the likelihood of scaling. At the same time, internationalization emerges as a key strategic lever that moderates institutional effects and enhances firms’ capacity to grow efficiently. Together, the three studies in this thesis advance knowledge by clarifying the conceptual foundations of scaling, detailing its process dynamics, and embedding the phenomenon within its broader institutional context.