Learning from Failure: Organizational Mortality and the Resource-based View

This paper examines the factors underlying firm failure, and compares the failure mechanisms for young firms against those of older organizations. This paper suggests that there are systematic differences between the determinants of firm failure for firms that fail early in life and those that fail after having successfully negotiated the early liabilities of newness and adolescence. Data from 339 Canadian corporate bankruptcies confirm that younger firms fail because of inadequacies in managerial knowledge and financial management abilities. On the other hand, older firms are more likely to fail because of an inability to adapt to environmental change.