Revisiting Stinchcombe’s liability of newness: a systematic literature review

In providing a seminal explanation of the ‘struggle for survival’ between newborn organisations and older ones, Arthur Stinchcombe (1965) introduced the ‘liability of newness’ hypothesis to account for those relevant problems that firms may face in the first years of their life cycle. Despite lively research commitment, an up-to-date systematisation of the theoretical and empirical findings on this topic is missing. This paper aims at contributing to fill this gap through a systematic literature review based on rigorous criteria. Our main results suggest that, although partially integrated, Stinchcombe’s theoretical underpinnings are still widely supported within the scientific community to date. These research findings can also contribute to improve knowledge on what is currently known and what prospectively constitutes a challenge for future research in this area.