A broader conception of corporate governance to support growth in innovative firms
Innovative firms represent a large pool of job and wealth creation within an economy. Yet, despite their high potential, we observe a high heterogeneity in their growth trajectories. By operationalizing a theoretical meta-model of governance proposed by Wirtz (2011), we seek to better understand the relationships between the more or less disciplinary or cognitive governance vision of entrepreneurs, the governance mechanisms they actually implement in their firm and the growth of their business. Based on the answers of 253 entrepreneurs from innovative firms, we show that entrepreneurs can have three visions of governance – cognitive, managerial disciplinary and financial disciplinary – that are linked to the setting up of specific mechanisms (board of directors, top management team, presence of capital investors), which themselves cause a more or less strong growth within their company.