Replication-Based Growth: Toward a Theory of Entrepreneurial Scaling Through Organizational Templates

Abstract

Entrepreneurial growth has traditionally been explained through innovation, opportunity recognition, dynamic capabilities, and strategic adaptation. While these perspectives have generated important insights, they provide only a partial explanation of how many organizations achieve sustained expansion in practice. Numerous firms, particularly those operating through multi-unit business formats, grow by systematically reproducing proven organizational systems rather than continuously generating novel products, services, or business models. Despite the prevalence of this phenomenon, existing research on replication, knowledge transfer, organizational routines, franchising, and entrepreneurial scaling remains fragmented and lacks an integrated theoretical explanation of replication as a distinct growth mechanism. This article addresses this gap by developing Replication-Based Growth (RBG) Theory, a conceptual framework that explains how organizations transform proven organizational systems into scalable engines of expansion. Drawing upon and integrating multiple theoretical streams, the framework identifies organizational templates, replication capability, scaling efficiency, and entrepreneurial scaling as the core mechanisms underlying replication-based growth. The study advances entrepreneurship and strategic management literature by conceptualizing reproducibility as a distinct logic of growth and by establishing replication as an independent pathway of entrepreneurial expansion. The proposed framework provides a foundation for future empirical research on organizational scaling, replication capability, and growth through organizational reproduction.