TY - JOUR
T1 - Death is not a success
T2 - Reflections on business exit
AU - Coad, Alex
N1 - Funding Information:
The author gratefully acknowledges financial support from the ESRC, TSB, BIS and NESTA on grants ES/H008705/1 and ES/J008427/1 as part of the IRC distributed projects initiative, as well as from the AHRC as part of the FUSE project. The usual disclaimer applies.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2013.
PY - 2014/11/27
Y1 - 2014/11/27
N2 - This article is a critical evaluation of claims that business exits should not be seen as failures, on the grounds that may constitute voluntary liquidation, or because they are learning opportunities. This can be seen as further evidence of bias affecting entrepreneurship research, where failures are repackaged as successes. This article reiterates that the majority of business exits are unsuccessful. Drawing on ideas from the organisational life course, it is suggested that business ‘death’ is a suitable term for describing business closure. Even cases of voluntary ‘harvest liquidation’ such as retirement can be meaningfully described as business deaths.
AB - This article is a critical evaluation of claims that business exits should not be seen as failures, on the grounds that may constitute voluntary liquidation, or because they are learning opportunities. This can be seen as further evidence of bias affecting entrepreneurship research, where failures are repackaged as successes. This article reiterates that the majority of business exits are unsuccessful. Drawing on ideas from the organisational life course, it is suggested that business ‘death’ is a suitable term for describing business closure. Even cases of voluntary ‘harvest liquidation’ such as retirement can be meaningfully described as business deaths.
KW - business exit
KW - closure
KW - entrepreneurial exit
KW - failure
KW - learning from failure
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U2 - 10.1177/0266242612475104
DO - 10.1177/0266242612475104
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84912026589
SN - 0266-2426
VL - 32
SP - 721
EP - 732
JO - International Small Business Journal
JF - International Small Business Journal
IS - 7
ER -