Penrose and Steindl: Foundations for a general theory of firms and competition

Edith Penrose and Josef Steindl each developed a distinctive analysis of the growth of firms. They undertook to understand the process that was leading to increasing dominance of industry, particularly manufacturing industry, by a small number of large firms. In the present paper, we examine the work of these two authors to detect similarities and differences in the way they deal with the determinants of firm growth and the implications of such growth for the competitive struggle amongst firms.