In the race to the South Pole, Roald Amundsen’s expedition covered an equal distance each day, irrespective of weather conditions, while Scott’s pace was erratic. Amundsen won the race and returned without loss of life, while Scott and his men died. In the context of firm growth, the Amundsen hypothesis suggests that smoother growth paths are associated with better performance in subsequent periods. We develop a new method to investigate how firms’ sales growth deviates from their long-run average growth path. Our baseline results suggest that growth path volatility is associated with higher growth of sales and profits, but also with higher exit rates. However, this result is driven by firms with negative growth rates. For positive-growth firms, volatility is negatively associated with both sales growth and survival, providing nuanced support for the Amundsen hypothesis.

在前往南极的比赛中，罗尔德·阿蒙森 (Roald Amundsen) 的探险队每天行驶的距离相等，而不受天气条件的影响，而斯科特 (Scott) 的步伐则不稳定。阿蒙森赢得了比赛并没有丧生，而斯科特和他的手下则死了。在公司增长的背景下，阿蒙森假设表明，更顺畅的增长路径与随后时期的更好业绩相关。我们开发了一种新方法来调查公司的销售增长如何偏离其长期平均增长路径。我们的基线结果表明，增长路径波动与销售额和利润的更高增长有关，但也与更高的退出率有关。然而，这一结果是由负增长率的公司推动的。对于正增长的公司，波动性与销售增长和生存都呈负相关，