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1. Introduction
Management and entrepreneurship research has long dealt with the topic of firm growth ([27] Gartner, 1990; [45] Livesay, 1995). On the one hand, a large body of research focussed on the life cycle of the firm conceptualized as a sequence of stages of growth ([44] Levie and Lichtenstein, 2010). On the other hand, there has been conspicuous empirical research on the determinants of firm growth, especially of small business growth ([15] Dobbs and Hamilton, 2007). More specifically, scholars have provided attention to the high-growth firms, that is those firms that experience high growth rates during a certain period of their life. These firms can be considered genuinely entrepreneurial ([12] Davidsson et al. , 2006; [70] Stevenson and Gumpert, 1985). Scholars emphasize how high-growth firms relentlessly pursue new combinations of resources and economic knowledge ([17] Drucker, 1985; [41] Langlois, 2007; [63] Schumpeter, 1934) and grow leveraging on resources that can be acquired or accessed in the marketplace ([33] Hart et al. , 1995). These considerations are consistent with recent empirical studies showing how firm-level effects, compared to industry- and country-effects, are the most important class of effects in explaining the variation in firm growth ([29] Goddard et al. , 2009).
A rich body of evidence and theory shows that high-growth firms extensively and systematically use external resources, that is resources owned by external organizations (firms and institutions), in order to grow beyond the limits set by internally controlled resources ([71] Stevenson and Jarillo, 1990). Most of this literature, which is mainly qualitative, examines external resources as input of high-growth firms. Firms enjoy outstanding growth by having access to external resources (e.g. financial capital, managerial capabilities, market knowledge) through long-lasting or newly established inter-organizational relationships ([20] Freel, 2000; [23] Furlan et al. , 2007; [42] Lechner and Dowling, 2003; [43] Lechner et al. , 2006).
A smaller number of studies consider the use of external resources as an output of high-growth, analyzing how growth influences the networking practices of the entrepreneurial firms. Some authors find that as small, growth-oriented firms grow, they tend to change their relational mix and expand their networks with external partners ([22] Furlan and Grandinetti, 2011; [4] Beekman and Robinson, 2004; [24] Furlan et al. , 2009; [42] Lechner and...