1 Introduction

Research on the economic importance of small firms was negligible until Birch (1981) introduced the term ‘gazelles’ to refer to a small set of high-growth firms (HGFs) that contribute disproportionately to the competitiveness of nations (Van Praag and Versloot 2007). From that time until today, gazelle companies have been considered particularly relevant for their national impact in terms of occupation and for their valuable contributions to economic wealth in society (Birch 1981; Fischer et al. 1998; WordlEconomicForum 2023), even in periods of recession (Henrekson and Johansson 2008).

Identification of the phenomenon ‘gazelle’ in the current business is based on knowing the characteristics of this subset of HGFs, which are, according to the OECD definition, all business entities up to 5 years old with average annualized growth greater than 20% per annum, over 3 years (European Commission 2007). In a nutshell, gazelles are firms growing considerably faster than the average industry level. They are thus young, fast-growing enterprises primarily established as start-ups (Morgan 2010). Metaphorically, recalling the title of one of the most popular songs of 1985, these companies are able to ‘Running up that hill’—i.e., fast-grow, quickly and effectively scale, and expand their operations. Compared with ‘elephants’—large and often publicly traded companies—and ‘mice’—small firms that grow very little and hence contribute only marginally to job creation, the ‘gazelles’ are vital organizations that grow quickly and create employment for the benefit of industry and the broader society (Birch and Medoff 1994).

Since its first conceptualization, the gazelle has aroused an ever-increasing interest of researchers, gaining momentum in the managerial field (Spitsin et al. 2022). The assumption is reached that companies that successfully grow and scale up become future winners and can turn into other fantastic entrepreneurial species such as unicorns, decacorns, and hectocorn—start-ups exceeding a premarket valuation of one billion USD, ten billion USD, and more than 100 billion USD, respectively (Simon 2016; Kuratko et al. 2020). Albeit some scholars (e.g., Aldrich and Ruef 2018) have argued that focusing on this set of HGFs contributes to a biased picture of entrepreneurship, it is essential, with a view of heterogeneity (Welter et al. 2017), not to overlook these realities, so that a more comprehensive and non-discriminatory perspective will lead to better theory and more insights that offer detailed information about the entrepreneurial development process (Ruef et al. 2023).

However, even if “gazelles” have become a vigorous research field in management studies, further study is needed to clarify and grasp the phenomenon in all its shades of meaning deeply. Indeed, these "black swans of the entrepreneurial world” are increasingly catching the attention of researchers because of their growing hype and rareness (Aldrich and Ruef 2018, p. 458). According to a recent article in an international newspaper, ‘gazelles’ are a species that is difficult to define because they are rare, and their success is not owed purely to chance. While it is commonly accepted that they are fast-growing companies, there is no general agreement on how gazelles are characterized (WordlEconomicForum 2023). Added to this is our interest in grasping the phenomenon, possibly also bringing to light factors related to the dark side of growing too fast, making a systematization of such studies even more necessary (Eklund and van Criekingen 2022). Although Guilmi et al. (2017) have attempted to analyse gazelles systematically, this previous study regarded only the marketing disciplines. According to this, a comprehensive systematic formulation of all contributions regarding gazelles is still lacking in management literature.

Starting from these considerations, we aim to fill this gap in the literature by considering the contributions of gazelles looking at the Business, Management, and Accounting (BMA) and Decision Sciences domains altogether.

Based on these reflections, this study tries to answer the following research questions:

  1. RQ1

    What is the state-of-the-art research on gazelles in management studies?

  2. RQ2

    What are the main research gaps, and which are the main promising future avenues of research?

Consequently, this paper focuses on the main contributions published on gazelles in management literature to provide a complete and up-to-date review by selecting and scanning Elsevier’s Scopus database to access publications. The analysis points out the primary descriptive and methodological aspects (quantitative features) and the main topics of the retrieved papers (qualitative characteristics). Finally, a conceptual framework and a research agenda have been depicted, identifying and intertwining the principal themes studied and lacunas while suggesting forthcoming avenues of research (Paul et al. 2021).

2 Research methodology and material collection

The systematic literature review (SLR) is recognized as a suitable methodology for systematically examining and evaluating a specific body of literature, culminating in a robust understanding of what is known and unknown in the area under investigation (Ginsberg and Venkatraman 1985). Widely embraced in the social sciences (Tranfield et al. 2003), management and marketing fields (Christofi et al. 2021; Paul and Feliciano‐Cestero 2021; Sauer and Seuring 2023; Kraus et al. 2024), and entrepreneurship studies (Salmony and Kanbach 2022; Moritz et al. 2023), a SLR offers several benefits, including transparency, rigor, scientificity, and replicability (Fan et al. 2022; Kraus et al. 2022)—thanks to the application of a rigorous research protocol (Leonidou et al. 2020), and the ability to construct flexible databases of articles that can easily be updated (Pickering and Byrne 2014).

The review process (Denyer and Tranfield 2009) was articulated in the following consecutive steps: (1) the collection of materials, (2) the descriptive analysis, (3) the selection of categories, and (4) the evaluation of collected materials.

Given the trade-off scholars encounter between data coverage and cleanliness, we opted to analyze a single database to mitigate potential issues related to data homogenization that could arise when working with multiple databases (e.g., Galati and Bigliardi 2019). Specifically, data for our SLR was extracted and gathered from Scopus, one of the most comprehensive sources of indexed academic publications (Archambault et al. 2009). Two reasons led to the selection of Scopus over Web of Science (WoS). First, Scopus has been found to have a broader coverage (60% larger) (Zhao and Strotmann 2015), and it offers a superior journal selection (Goodman 2007). Second, Mingers and Lipitakis (2010) similarly suggest that WoS does not cover publications in administration and business management literature well.

Our SLR considers all the papers that are available online until June 1, 2023.

Afterward, the research focuses on selecting the keywords to be used.

To get a broad view of the topic, we ran a query using a combination of selected keywords and adopting the Boolean operator “OR” ("gazelle*" OR "high growth firm**" OR “high-growth firm*) in the fields related to “title” “abstract” and “keywords”. The combination of the selected keywords has allowed a broad, but focused vision of the research domain.

The results (2363 papers) were extracted after running the search in the database.

After confining the search to the subject areas “Business, Management, and Accounting” and “Decision Sciences”, the search yielded 449 articles.

Subsequently, our attention is directed towards contributions that addressed three distinct characteristics (Newbert 2007):

  • Peer-review published papers;

  • Articles in international journals;

  • Papers written in English.

Limiting the search to peer-reviewed journals enhances the quality control of search results, given the rigorous evaluation process that articles in such journals undergo (Newbert 2007). Consequently, these criteria exclude contributions, such as monographs, book chapters, conference proceedings, etc., whose scientific rigor is challenging to evaluate (Tranfield et al. 2003). This additional constraint resulted in a reduction of the articles from 449 to 332.

A thorough examination of the 332 abstracts resulted in additional screening, ultimately narrowing down the sample to 82 papers. We excluded duplicates and eliminated works unrelated to the research subject, retaining only 82 abstracts deemed relevant for the study, following the 'fit for purpose' method (Abatecola et al. 2013). The selected 82 papers were then downloaded, archived, and organized in an Excel file for the analysis of their scientific characteristics.

The final database encompasses information such as the journal of publication, year of publication, authorship type (single author or collaboration), paper type (conceptual or empirical), research type (quantitative or qualitative), applied methodology (case study, survey, literature review, etc.), adopted theory/framework, investigated sector, and geographical focus.

The entire review process was carried out separately by two researchers (Silverman 2001), then by sharing and integrating their analyses to seek the highest degree of reliability (Gilmore and Coviello 1999).

Figure 1 shows the overall SLR process.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Source: Authors’ elaboration

Review process.

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3 Results

The results analysis was segmented into two sections. In the first one, the key features of the papers were analysed. In the second section, articles were classified, identifying the main topics studied in BMA and Decision sciences fields so far to understand the primary considerations by scholars and the research orientation.

3.1 Quantitative analysis

First, we plotted the evolution of publications on gazelles from a managerial and organizational perspective over June 2023. Figure 2 presents this evolution, which testifies to the significant scholarly interest in the topic, especially in the last decade; this is probably in line with the fact that, since 2012, technology—which has, as we will see, a central role in gazelles operating mainly in a high-tech or knowledge-intensive sectors—has skyrocketed, becoming not only a supporter but an integral part of starting, running and scaling a business. Perhaps this aspect—that is, that technology has become a permanent revolution for gazelles over time (and no longer revolutionary)—has led the interest of scholars to decrease and settle at levels that are nevertheless significant from 2017 onwards.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Source: Authors’ elaboration on the dataset

Temporal distribution of publications.

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The publication timeframe of the articles covering these HGFs starts at the beginning of 2000. The results of 2023 are partial (as it only considers 5 months of the year).

The journals that present the most significant number of published papers focus on small enterprises, in line with the fact that the entrepreneurial category under analysis concerns small businesses characterized by high growth. Small Business Economics—as a journal that involves a broad scope of topics, ranging from the core themes of the entrepreneurial process and new venture creation to other topics like self-employment, small and medium-sized enterprises, innovative start-ups, and entrepreneurial finance—covers the highest numbers of publications (17.1%) (Table 1). Secondly, we found six Journals that contain two contributions each. Finally, there are 56 Journals, each covering only one contribution.

Table 1 Journals included in the sample
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Analysing the methodological aspects of the papers, we observed that 74 articles out of 82 are based on empirical evidence, while eight are conceptual.

Figure 3 shows that most empirical papers are quantitative (57 out of 74) and are mainly based on elaborations on datasets (26) and surveys (21).

Fig. 3
figure 3

Source: Authors’ elaboration on the dataset

Classification of the papers according to the methodological approach adopted by authors.

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There are 14 qualitative papers; most of these are based on the case study (9) and interviews (3).

Moreover, three papers use a qualitative-quantitative approach. One associates interviews with dataset processing, and two analyse the phenomenon through surveys and interviews.

Conceptual papers proposed new frameworks in one out of eight, while seven papers adopted a literature review approach that helps scholars establish a context for their research.

3.2 Qualitative analysis

For a deeper understanding of this stream of literature, we decided, through interpretation, to trace the material back to different macro-topics. In this phase, we used inductive content analysis (Elo and Kyngäs 2008), organizing qualitative data and proceeding with open coding, creating categories, and abstraction. The purpose behind establishing categories is to elucidate the phenomenon, enhance comprehension, and generate knowledge (Cavanagh 1997). Specifically, the material is thoroughly examined, and categories are devised to group the retrieved papers. The goal of organizing into broader higher-order categories (Burnard 1991) is to bring together articles that share similarities or connections; furthermore, this facilitates a comparison between the material pertaining to a specific topic and others that do not fall within the same category. During the formulation of categories, we make interpretative decisions regarding which material should be grouped together (Dey 1993).

Specifically, the qualitative coding process identified seven main themes (Fig. 4):

Fig. 4
figure 4

Source: Authors’ elaboration on the dataset

Main topics related to Gazelles.

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3.2.1 Performance

Most of the contributions on gazelles have focused on their performance, in terms of profitability, solvency, growth, and success (Heimonen and Virtanen 2012), to contribute to the debate on the existence of non-linearities in the growth process of these firms (Lopez-Garcia and Puente 2012).

The organizational context and the quality of the external business environment have been considered to understand better the variation in these firms' performance (Hansen et al. 2018). Some scholars demonstrated that growth is mainly determined by the gazelle’s endogenous strategic characteristics (Chae 2023); these unique capabilities have allowed these companies to face crises successfully and probably overcome future ones (Pletnev and Naumova 2023).

In that regard, it has been confirmed that internal factors such as business entity size (Moreno and Casillas 2007; Sirec and Mocnik 2014; Coad and Karlsson 2022), life cycle stages, technology, and product innovation, the strength of management (Hansen et al. 2018), organizational structure (Murmann et al. 2014), the qualitative level of financial information (Anton and Carp 2020), and external factors (as the general state of the economy, sector, and type of customers) exercise a more or less significant impact on the performance/effectiveness (sales growth and achievement of goals) of these HGFs (Dragnić 2014).

Nonetheless, some scholars have found a low probability of these “one-hit wonders” repeating high growth rates (Daunfeldt and Halvarsson 2015; Mogos et al. 2021).

Not surprisingly, while on the one hand, the dynamism of gazelles is fuelled by a high degree of innovation, and key drivers of success are self-organization and agility (e.g., in the manufacturing sector; Sims and O’Regan 2006), it could be considered as a ‘temporarily’ vulnerable aspect because it is often associated with lower profitability and productivity (Raymond et al. 2009). Gazelles do not adequately master the characteristics of their new products, given their frequent renewal of products (Raymond et al. 2009). It has also been found that gazelles perceive problems in several areas, including obtaining financing (Lee 2014), even if they tend to rely on profits rather than external funds to finance their growth (Coad and Srhoj 2020).

3.2.2 Policy and employment

Public policy—such as subsidies policy (Koski and Pajarinen 2013)—recovers a central role in sustaining gazelles. Studies on this topic highlighted that it is crucial to support firms’ growth by improving access to various sources and types of financing (Anton 2019; Zhang and Guan 2022). This also suggests that government intervention should increase credit availability for gazelles (Brown and Lee 2019).

For instance, Cattaruzzo et al. (2022) show that the main explanatory factors of the significant post-crisis drop in Spanish aggregate R&D are changes in the public financing scheme and the decreased contribution of gazelles. Policymakers should adequately reflect upon the specificities of their entrepreneurial environment when devising policy interventions (Mason and Brown 2013; Brown et al. 2017) and define public policy according to the variegate nature, need, and purpose of different types of start-ups (Morris et al. 2015). On this trail, Lindič et al. (2012) highlight the urgency of a change from economic policies targeted at specific size companies, industries, and business activities to economic policy framework based on interindustry cooperation and collaboration between companies of different sizes. This is also confirmed by Daunfeldt et al. (2015), which claim that the proportion of small firms and their growth patterns differ across countries.

In the broad time frame of the analysis, gazelles are found to be outstanding job creators and promoters of employment growth (Henrekson and Johansson 2010; Cuaresma et al. 2014), in different contexts, such as Australia (Hall and Tozer 2000), USA (Acs and Mueller 2008), Czech Republic (Krošláková et al. 2015), Russia and Spain (Savin and Novitskaya 2023).

3.2.3 Innovation

Gazelles increasingly originate and drive disruptive innovations (Tatum 2007), creating a unique ecosystem that is difficult to imitate and often supported by regional innovation systems (Zhao and Richards 2012). However, the cross-country differences must be considered (Dahlin et al. 2020).

Moreover, it has been established that the relative technological position of a country has a substantial influence on the success (and choice) of innovation and R&D-based growth strategies (Hölzl 2009). More recent studies have highlighted that innovation is the only common feature of organizations growing during economic shocks (Temel and Forsman 2022). However, the innovativeness, although protected by intellectual property in the form of patents (Helm et al. 2017), shows an internal contradiction that, on the one hand, affirms it as the primary source of income (especially in services) (Kubičková et al. 2018; Benešová et al. 2018) but, on the other hand, shows significant risk due to the necessity of assigning additional expenses (Kuś 2020). Follow-up action and personnel controls could be useful to capture the actual effects of innovativeness (Pesämaa 2017).

Moreover, the growth dynamics of these organizations are positively and strongly correlated with the involvement of green technologies (eco-innovation) (Colombelli et al. 2021). In particular, sustainable gazelles are more often involved in activities aimed at developing and improving existing production processes and are also less committed to international operations in new foreign markets (Gabrielsson et al. 2014). A consumer-oriented perspective—and interacting with customers—positively affects organizations’ innovation output (Ryzhkova 2015) and mediates the effect of absorptive capacity on innovation performance (Ryzhkova and Pesämaa 2015).

3.2.4 Entrepreneurship

Researchers in the field of entrepreneurship have focused on the black swans and outliers of the entrepreneurial world (Ruef et al. 2023), characterized by entrepreneurs notably less concerned about the future (especially in the digital context; Bandera and Passerini 2020) and extremely rare financing forms such as IPOs, venture capital financing, and founding from outside investors (Cunneen and Meredith 2007; Aldrich and Ruef 2018). In this direction, other authors have brought out the rapid scaling-up that characterizes this type of enterprise, highlighting the proliferation of fast-growing ventures (Kuratko and Audretsch 2022). Likewise, other scholars have pointed out that organizational capabilities can be a constraint for some high-potential entrepreneurs in developing economies, and accelerators can help identify these entrepreneurs and boost their growth (González-Uribe and Reyes 2021). On the other hand, organizational capabilities can be considered critical to the survival of these businesses years later (Andonova et al. 2013). Guilmi et al. (2017) propose a conceptual model for understanding the phenomenon of gazelles which integrates the findings of previous research into five building blocks: (1) Innovation considered as a core concept; (2) Company’s Resources and Capabilities; (3) Organizational Learning and Change; (4) the Strategic Triangle of the Value; and (5) the Context and Environment surrounding the company. In particular, the most relevant entrepreneurial ecosystem factors enabling the birth and activity of high-growth start-ups can be identified in cultural and social norms, government programs, R&D transfer, and internal market dynamics (Corrente et al. 2019; Martínez-Fierro et al. 2020). In turn, gazelles create new jobs, revenue growth, and a competitive economy (Pšeničny et al. 2014). However, entrepreneurs from different ecosystems faced disparate challenges and uneven access to resources and networks (Cowell et al. 2018).

3.2.5 Corporate governance and decision-making

Corporate governance, ownership, venture capitalists, and decision-makers are central in creating gazelles. Ladegard and Rasmussen (2015) report that high-growth firms, compared to the average small and medium enterprises (SMEs), are smaller and younger, have more owners and larger boards where owners and managers appear to have shared interests, and the strategic and advisory role of the board is thus more critical than the monitoring role. On the other hand, Bjuggren et al. (2013) found that, at first sight, family ownership decreases the probability of exhibiting high growth. However, it sometimes becomes positive when firm growth is analysed over extended periods. Focusing on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Harms et al. (2010) found that the personal involvement of the entrepreneur and slack resources contribute equally to the monetary and temporal engagement in CSR, while market-based factors only seem to have a minor influence.

Moreover, making high-quality decisions is central to create a fast-moving start-up. Regarding Venture Capitalists (VCs), in the case of a new venture investment decision, overconfident VCs may overestimate the likelihood that a funded company will succeed, and although overconfidence in itself does not necessarily lead to a wrong decision, the bias is likely to inhibit learning and improving the decision process (Zacharakis and Shepherd 2001). For this reason, the VC can efficiently screen venture proposals through actuarial decision aids to assist in the screening process by guaranteeing consistency across different proposals and time efficiency (Zacharakis and Meyer 2000). Generally, the investors’ experience and active role positively affect gazelles’ sales growth (Croce et al. 2021) and help to introduce business processes and practices conducive to long-term development and performance (St-Pierre et al. 2011).

Achtenhagen et al. (2014) highlight that gazelles use planning and control systems and perceive them as important for continuous growth. However, Muurlink et al. (2012) report that when a gazelle is exposed to an internal or external threat, decision-makers who respond conservatively, adhering to previously learned solutions rather than innovatively, can produce additional stress.

3.2.6 Human resources

Gazelle growth results from human capital’s perpetual discovery and use of productive knowledge (Henrekson and Johansson 2008). Thus, knowledge recovers a central role in the innovation process, and, specifically, knowledge lattice can help workers to better connect with the knowledge they require for innovating (Kang et al. 2021). In this sense, although education does not always positively affect the business’s growth (Fafchamps and Woodruff 2017), educational background diversity is beneficial for becoming a gazelle (Eklund and van Criekingen 2022). Reacting to rapidly changing conditions, gazelles are forced to organizational flexibility, meaning that few absolute rules are adopted (Wilkinson et al. 2022). Specifically, gazelles generally apply transformational leadership; however, they work on intellectual stimulation that can create and produce proactiveness in the long term and constant sustainable growth in the market (Palalic 2017; Palalic and Durakovic 2018).

3.2.7 Strategy

Selecting an effective approach to strategy significantly impacts firm performance (Harms and Ehrmann 2009); however, it is fundamental to adjust strategy in response to changes in the external environment. Along these lines, by studying gazelles, Parker et al. (2010) highlight which strategy and environmental variables have a predictable influence on firm performance and why the routine application of ‘best practice’ strategies is unlikely to foster firm growth in a changing economic environment. Sargent and Matthews (2015) report that several high-growth companies are pursuing strategies targeting the base of the pyramid's consumers and expanding internationally. Along these lines, Senderovitz et al. (2016) find a positive relationship between growth and profitability among gazelle firms moderated by market strategy.

Moreover, in addressing the strategy through a micro-level approach, some scholars (Korsakienė et al. 2019) disclose that the traits of entrepreneurs and managers, matching entrepreneurial tasks, are a good predictor of gazelles’ internationalisation. Furthermore, the characteristics of the entrepreneurial/management teams, strategic partnerships, and entry into complex markets are the main differentiators in long-term internationalisation paths and growth cycles, irrespectively of the industry (Hagen and Zucchella 2014). Also, the venture must select the entry mode in an international market. In this regard, some scholars demonstrated the link between experienced entrepreneurs and the application of effectuation rather than causation in the international new venture creation process (Harms and Schiele 2012).

4 Discussion and future research agenda

The first research question put forward was the following:

  1. RQ1

    What is the state-of-the-art research on gazelles in management studies?

The study of gazelles in BMA and Decisions Sciences literature has led to the emergence of relevant topics useful to shed light on these entrepreneurial species characterized by an extraordinary tendency to grow. As emerged in Fig. 5, gazelles can scale up thanks to a winning combination of the firm’s intention and nature, the interaction between firm-level and external factors, and the environment. Policy instruments, government programs, and R&D transfer recover a central role in supporting gazelles, which, in a virtuous cycle, are more characterized, compared to other start-ups, by a high potential for their impact on job creation (Henrekson and Johansson 2010). The research conducted, therefore, in addition to highlighting the external characteristics that favor gazelles, also makes explicit those elements relating specifically to the level of the company, such as its approach to sustainability, organizational competencies, decision-making, and leadership approaches, entrepreneurial personality traits and strategies adopted to aim for competitive advantage (Sims and O’Regan 2006; Palalic 2017; Palalic and Durakovic 2018; Benešová et al. 2018). This viable combination—which comprehends human resources, management procedures, innovative practices, and value chain partners—enables gazelles to expand their market share at the expense of competitors and sustainably perform better.

Fig. 5
figure 5

Source: Authors’ elaboration

Conceptual framework on gazelles’ topics in the BMA and Decision Sciences fields.

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However, the detailed literature analysis also sheds light on the criticalities and challenges that make gazelles vulnerable, especially in a long time. Gazelles exhibit distinct organizational capabilities, including agility. However, due to their frequent renewal of products or services, they may encounter challenges in effectively mastering the renewal of their output characteristics (Raymond et al. 2009), potentially leading to lower profitability and productivity. The skills, knowledge, and experience of the human resources involved in launching and building these businesses are extremely particular and updated; simultaneously, the entrepreneur's personality should present specific traits and leadership attitudes (Palalic and Durakovic 2018). It has also been found that gazelles perceive problems in obtaining financing and may need more support from institutions over the years. Further challenges regard the difficulty of building consolidated interactions and cooperated relations with the public sector and companies of different sizes (Lindič et al. 2012).

These shreds of evidence align with gazelles' very modest business survival rates.

Thus, it appears necessary to support the viability of these entrepreneurial species in their growth challenges and during the crisis through a policy framework aimed at supporting gazelles to cope with their growth challenges through programs that provide matchmaking, advice, and networking activities directed to gazelles (Corrente et al. 2019; Martínez-Fierro et al. 2020). Accordingly, the external institutional context should focus on identifying and supporting high-growth firms and offering time-specific and peer-based support measures, such as consultations and networking with experienced entrepreneurs during market turbulence or business transition. Adequate policy approaches to improve the network could help build social and professional relationships that gazelles can use to identify and access resources (Mason and Brown 2013; Brown et al. 2017). In this way, it could be possible to improve the business survival rates of gazelles and, in turn, employment promotion and economic growth in the long term.

By discussing the scientific landscape in detail (please see Table 2 in the Appendix), the first insight that appears clear from the present literature review is that gazelles deal with cross-cutting themes that influence each other (see Sect. 3.2). On one hand, this can be interpreted as the depth of the subject matter. On the other, it leaves some aspects understudied, as will be discussed later in this section, answering the second research question.

The first insight is that most contributions used empirical methodologies, while the percentage of conceptual papers is relatively marginal.

The few identified conceptual contributions go into detail on issues concerning, for instance, disruptive innovations (Tatum 2007), blitzcaling (Kuratko and Audretsch 2022), job creation (Henrekson and Johansson 2010), economic development (Morris et al. 2015), and competencies and institutions fostering high-growth (Henrekson and Johansson 2008). In most cases, however, they don’t embrace a comprehensive approach or a proposed framework.

Among the most frequently used theories indeed—and unsurprisingly—there is the theory of economic growth, often adopted to frame the phenomenon. For instance, Colombelli et al. (2021) connected the firm growth to the generation of green technologies; in some cases, the theory helps in formulating hypotheses to test growth rates, effects on future performance, and chances of survival (Mogos et al. 2021; Coad and Srhoj 2020; Anton and Carp 2020). Through the Penrosean view, instead, Pšeničny et al. (2014) frame dynamic entrepreneurship.

The Resource-Based View (RBV) theory has frequently been adopted for investigating the allocation of resources in a specific geographic region, as well as the business angels’ characteristics on firm growth (Croce et al. 2021) and the contribution made by VCs (St-Pierre et al. 2011). Thus, it emerged that resources are a sufficient reason for the fast-growing performance, even if measuring their non-financial contribution is complex (St-Pierre et al. 2011).

The contingency approach—which is based on the theory that management effectiveness is dependent upon the interplay between the application of management behaviors and specific situations—has been adopted by Hansen et al. (2018) to understand if the performance is driven by the firm’s business environment, capability, strategies, and any combination of these, and by Senderovitz et al. (2016) to argue that the profit implications of a growth strategy depend on other additional internal procedures and strategies.

Guilmi et al. (2017), instead, combine, from a theory perspective, the firm’s growth (Penrosean view), the resource-based view theory, the contingency theory, and the organizational learning theory for building their proposed model.

Several contributions evoke the Gibrat law’s theory, which states that the proportional change in the size of a firm is independent of its absolute size (Moreno and Casillas 2007; Hölzl 2009; Lopez-Garcia and Puente 2012; Murmann et al. 2014; Cuaresma et al. 2014). On the other hand, Parker et al. (2010) underline that Gibrat’s law of random firm growth processes does not generally hold, and strategy and environmental variables predict firm performance.

The empirical studies, which have emerged as the most numerous, have been conducted, in most cases, in a single country.

Europe ranks first among the countries where more studies have been conducted in line with the fact that, although geographically the smallest continent, in recent years, it has been recognized as one of the most important lands for a complex start-up network (StartupBlink 2020). We noted that there is a dearth of empirical studies on the topic of gazelles in particular geographical areas, and thus, generalizing the results may be inappropriate.

Few studies carried out a cross-country analysis (e.g., Hölzl (2009) analysed HGFs from 16 countries, demonstrating that R&D is more critical in countries closer to the technological frontier), in some cases also providing a continental comparison (e.g., St-Pierre et al. 2011; Martínez-Fierro et al. 2020; Savin and Novitskaya 2023), to identify key drivers of high growth, whether or not linked to the country factor or geographical area.

Furthermore, the sectors that received the most attention were Information technology (IT), high-tech, manufacturing, and knowledge-intensive services. The traditional sectors have been inadequately explored—the food sector has only been investigated in one study and one country (Hansen et al. 2018). This is in line with the fact that growing companies do not seem to be overrepresented in high-tech industries, but there is some evidence that they are overrepresented in services (Henrekson and Johansson 2010). Furthermore, as in Table 2 in the Appendix, many studies consider, in the definition of the sample, companies selected only for their gazelle's status, regardless of a specific sector, by offering, thus, a final scenario multisector.

Given the above picture emerging from the systematic literature review, it is now possible to complete the answer to the second research question about the gaps in the literature and propose some future avenues of research.

  1. RQ2

    What are the main research gaps, and which are the main promising future avenues of research?

Understudied or neglected aspects based on methodological characteristics and theoretical foundations and assumptions—which can be detected by Table 2 in the Appendix—have allowed us to identify new research paths. It can certainly be said that some themes that have already been investigated, like performance, policy and employment, innovation, and entrepreneurship, enjoy greater detail in the literature. At the same time, other issues deserve more attention; for example, topics such as strategy, human resources, corporate governance, and decision-making are inadequately explored (please see Sect. 3.2), even if they are not at all marginal topics.

Studies that have focused on performance have neglected, for example, the identification of specific performance indicators (Hughes and Bartlett 2002), quantifiable, synthetic, and significant measures that make it possible to measure the non-linear growth of this type of company in its various aspects. Future studies could also further focus on the factors/drivers related to the performance and longevity of gazelles by investigating how many of these companies maintain their status over time.

Public policy and employment are key topics that discuss sustaining gazelles and job creation. Future studies could highlight the specificities of the entrepreneurial environment derived from policy interventions and the impact on employment by comparing different contexts through cross-countries studies or specific analyses regarding specific sectors that have benefited from particular public policies. Also, it could be interesting to investigate the impact of policies specifically on employment related to the special economic zone regarding the gazelles.

While one of the most explored aspects, innovation certainly deserves further attention. Future studies should consider more aspects and, above all, follow the business model stream of research, shedding light on alternative new business models’ configurations able to help managers on their way to high growth and to provide alternative approaches and new opportunities for choices in the diffusion and exchange of new products and services. Moreover, the impact that the crisis has had on the business model innovation of these companies should be explored, both conceptually and empirically, to fully understand how these firms might react to future global crises and how innovation might moderate the negative impacts in this regard. Furthermore, a thorough study should be conducted on the critical role of enabling technologies (such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and robotics) and platforms in the innovation field, conceptualizing the impact of digital transformation and platformization in changing prevalent value creation and capturing mechanisms to enable gazelles to take powerful key positions (Geurts and Cepa 2023). Another interesting point of view would be to contribute to the debate on the intersection between innovation and sustainability, identifying important issues in supporting innovation processes and in creating better conditions to reach sustainability conditions properly; for example, it would be interesting to conduct exploratory studies to bring to light the conditions under which open innovation (OI) can lead to sustainability. In this regard, OI, describing how firms innovate by interacting with other parties, is an aspect not effectively performed in this domain, especially about the key role that the consumer can play in business success; only Ryzhkova (2015) and Ryzhkova and Pesämaa (2015) deal with how online collaboration with customers can drive innovation performance.

Entrepreneurship also deserves more attention. Although Cowell et al. (2018), Corrente et al. (2019), and Martínez-Fierro et al. (2020) have already adopted the entrepreneurial ecosystem lens, future studies could deeper investigate the impact of a country’s start-up ecosystem and accelerators on the development of gazelles and boost their growth. Additional studies can focus on the entrepreneurial ecosystem factors enabling the birth and activity of high-growth start-ups, such as cultural and social norms, government programs, R&D transfer, and internal market dynamics from a geographic perspective by analysing valuable examples from which to extract good entrepreneurship practices. Likewise, it would be interesting to explore the entrepreneurial ecosystems and the necessary resources that boost the attitude of potential entrepreneurs. In this direction, future research avenues could concern the adoption of theoretical lenses helpful for analysing the importance of relations and interconnection for describing a complex system, such as the service ecosystem approach. A service ecosystem view can help to explore the different resources, value propositions, and co-creation practices arising from actors’ engagement in the gazelles (Akaka et al. 2013; Polese et al. 2019). An ecosystem’s view (Pattinson et al. 2022) can help to deeply evaluate the future perspective on these HGFs by adequately investigating the actors involved and the value co-creation practices that could arise. A systemic approach allows for a more comprehensive perspective by encompassing the examination of social and cultural capitals at a macro-level, which should be integrated with the investigation of the micro-level (economic capital) and meso-level (relational capital) in the territorial system (Troisi et al. 2019). Indeed, the ecosystems’ view allows a multi-level analysis of actors involved in this complex network, purposes, resources engaged, and co-creation practices and allows light to be shed on stratified governance, decision-making, and policymaking to capture challenges and implications at each level.

Marginal literature on corporate governance could be further expanded by identifying new and valuable corporate governance frameworks that can balance stakeholders' interests. Decision-Making topic should hold a central role in the study of gazelles. The current turbulent, uncertain, and rapidly changing environment calls for a revision of the approaches and logic behind organizations in favour of a perspective in which these incredible enterprises constantly transform themselves by interacting with the external context. For this reason, it could be interesting if future studies will adopt the theoretical lens of the co-evolutionary approach in the gazelles’ landscape, which could be useful to, according to the Darwinist perspective, describe the decision-making process through the combination of elements of variety and variability (Breslin 2008; Cristofaro 2022) which enable a virtuous co-evolution with the environment.

The topic of human resources could be more deeply discussed with future contributions. Although the importance of a “knowledge lattice” has already been recognized (Kang et al. 2021), future studies could regard the contribution of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in managing knowledge in gazelles. Furthermore, some contributions have already pointed out that gazelles, reacting to rapidly changing conditions, are forced to organizational flexibility; in such a direction, future works could regard the remote work and hybrid work policy adopted by gazelles. Some scholars already highlighted that gazelles generally apply transformational leadership (Palalic and Durakovic 2018); however, future streams of research could investigate the dark side related to such leadership approach, for instance, regarding the traits of personality of the managers characterized by hubris.

Until now, most of the papers have investigated the existence and awareness of the need for appropriate strategies for growth and adequate organizational performance in firms (see Sect. 3.2). Future studies should establish whether new approaches, skills, capabilities, etc., could help formulate a successful strategy in a firm embracing high growth. This could be studied at a general level and by considering single sectors and comparing them, seeking to identify common points and peculiarities to support boards and managers in their decisions. Regarding the internationalisation strategy, for instance, the few studies, as emerged from the qualitative analysis, have focused on entrepreneurial/managerial traits and entry mode, neglecting all other aspects related to this critical process (e.g., the relationship between digital technologies and internationalisation) (Cassetta et al. 2020). In this sense, useful frameworks for analysis of international operations, the patterns of global growth, and the processes involved with expansion to foreign markets should be provided.

In summary, all of these aspects need to be studied more in-depth from a theoretical point of view, alongside empirical methods, to help discover the relationships between the different issues relevant to gazelles’ management. Future studies should involve more qualitative methodologies, such as in-depth interviews, to obtain additional findings to support the evidence.

Future lines of research could also focus on investigating hitherto neglected, but notoriously active countries from a fast-growing entrepreneurial perspective (e.g., Israel, India, and Singapore), and further studies are also needed using representative samples to reflect the phenomenon’s characteristics accurately.

Finally, future longitudinal studies could also be useful in detecting any changes that occur over time, establishing the correct sequence of events, and providing insight into cause-and-effect relationships, especially for these ever-changing realities.

5 Implications and final remarks

5.1 Theoretical and practical implications

Our research provides a systematic literature review that has implications for academia.

Firstly, the study represents the first attempt at a structured review of gazelles fully covering the BMA and Decision Sciences fields until the period considered. Although the topic of “gazelles” has become a vigorous research field in management studies, a comprehensive systematic formulation of all contributions regarding gazelles is still lacking in management literature, and this study has aimed to fill this gap by looking at BMA and Decision Sciences domains altogether. Moreover, this format’s established methodological protocols result in a transparent and replicable study, which allows for minimizing the risk of bias (Rother 2007). The systematic review's inclusivity allows for avoiding a myopic selection of supportive studies, and a critical assessment can also create the building blocks for the development of theory, as identified gaps and insights could be shaped into new contributions (Breslin and Gatrell 2023).

Secondly, the review contributes to understanding the current state of gazelles’ research and the major research streams on this topic by identifying seven themes that, at different levels, provide insights into the issue of gazelles companies. Indeed, this work offers a systematization of the studies on this topic, the description of quantitative features of the publications, and a qualitative analysis of the main topics related to gazelles by making possible clarification of the phenomenon in all its shades of meaning. Thus, the research carried out tries, although ‘gazelles’ is a species challenging to define, to shed light on these entrepreneurial species, characterizing them as high-growth firms that can scale up thanks to a winning combination of the firm’s intention and nature, the interaction between firm-level and external factors, and the environment, as well bringing to light factors related to the dark side of growing too fast.

Third, this review's findings and evidences have allowed us to draw fruitful avenues for academics to undertake future research, presenting a range of promising paths to extend this domain. Understudied or unkempt considerations based on methodological characteristics and theoretical foundations and assumptions have been highlighted to identify new research paths.

The present study also offers some valuable recommendations to both policymakers and practitioners. Before reaching their full potential, such promising firms require authentic and concrete policy interventions. Accordingly, policymakers could develop adequate policy frameworks—from different levels (regional, national, and international)—which need a good understanding of gazelles’ characteristics and the drivers and bottlenecks to their evolution. In this sense, public policy should adequately consider the specificities of their entrepreneurial environment according to the gazelles’ varied nature, needs, and purposes. Indeed, the growth of innovative ventures is restricted by access to entrepreneurial capital and support programs, such as business accelerators, which can be cost-effective policy tools to accelerate the growth of gazelles. However, although acceleration programs help to support innovative ventures, only a limited number of entrepreneurial projects will become gazelles.

Such a policy framework should focus not only on financial terms through access to more significant amounts of capital but also on creating an adequate environment for breakthrough companies to thrive, capable of fostering fit-for-purpose, inclusive, and cohesive innovation networks. This should include pro-innovation regulation, enhancing research-to-innovation transfer, and improving the entrepreneurship culture through government programs. In a virtuous cycle, the entrepreneurial ecosystem, in turn, can support and boost the attitude of potential entrepreneurs and contribute to economic development and the creation of new jobs.

Decision-makers and managers within an organization should recognize the importance of perpetuating the process of innovative value creation. For these reasons, the leadership approach should be transformational, aimed at sustaining innovation and renewal within the organization through encouragement, inspiration, and motivation within an environment characterized by trust.

Digital technologies have become essential for supporting companies’ growth dynamics from the perspective of consumer engagement and resource sharing with other organizations that are part of the start-up ecosystem. In addition, managers should also recognize the importance of finding investors with entrepreneurial skills. Through their expertise, they could also contribute to repeat high growth rates in the future, not just being ‘one-hit wonders’ (Daunfeldt and Halvarsson 2015).

5.2 Conclusion and limitations

In conclusion, this work, by adopting the methodology of the systematic literature review, investigates the state-of-the-art research on gazelles in management studies. The results of the analysis shed light on the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the scientific landscape on this emerging topic and offer an innovative conceptual framework about the gazelles, bringing out the main research gaps and promising future avenues of research.

This study contributes significantly to the research on gazelles by offering an up-to-date picture of the international managerial literature related to the research topic. Primarily, the study presents an approach to comprehensively grasp research by selecting, evaluating, and summarizing studies in the interconnected domains of BMA and Decision Sciences. This process results in a precise systematization of contributions in the literature.

Furthermore, although clarity about (and explorations of) the role played by literature reviews in theory building is limited (cf. Breslin and Gatrell 2023), a systematic review was considered appropriate in this study based on the purpose of this research, which is to identify key findings in current research and to offer suggestions for future research (Paul et al. 2021).

Apart from the potential value of this contribution, it is essential to recognize certain limitations. Our review was limited to the selection and scanning of a single database, Scopus. This decision may result in the omission of significant contributions that are not indexed in Scopus.

Moreover, the researchers' choice of keywords and filters, even if as broad as possible, could condition the search algorithm, overlooking key works in this domain. For instance, this work does not embrace articles published in conferences, which could be updated about new research trends. Another area for improvement is that some collected data may contain inaccurate or out-of-context content. However, the quality criteria of the publications were evaluated independently by two researchers, hopefully reducing the likelihood of erroneous results.

Also, it must be noted that after the extrapolation of the list of contributions, the search was organised as a manual process, not an automated one. This was consistent with the practices of other researchers seeking a deeper understanding of a phenomenon.

Thus, this work provides state-of-the-art research that paves the way for more investigation to reach a profound understanding of these HGFs. Future studies could combine the selection of different databases (e.g., Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar) and decide to extend the search also to those contributions whose scientific rigor is challenging to evaluate to drill down these entrepreneurial ventures. Also, future systematic literature reviews could consider the quality assessment of the papers by defining the appropriate ranking threshold of the quality of the journals.