Organisational behaviour
Greiner’s growth model
Recognize and transition through different phases of company growth.
Read article
keymodelsAll comparisons
Compare
Greiner’s growth model vs Organisational growth model (Greiner)
The corpus marks this as a duplicate or close editorial overlap. Use the comparison to preserve provenance and decide which public article treatment is the better starting point.
Close overlapFramework / modelFramework / modelOrganisational behaviour
Organisational behaviour
Organisational growth model (Greiner)
Greiner’s growth model helps to identify the root cause of problems that a fast-growing organisation is likely to encounter, and makes it possible to anticipate them.
Read articleChoice logic
Use this when.
To recognise organisational pressures associated with different phases of growth and prepare a transition.
Use the model when growth is exposing unclear authority, slow decisions, overloaded founders, fragmented business units or excessive process.
Extracted signals
Strengths, limits, and pitfalls.
Greiner’s growth model
- Collect evidence from founders, frontline employees, middle managers and central functions before naming a phase. Identify the management practice that once helped growth but now constrains it, then design a transition that preserves its remaining value while changing the bottleneck.
- Diagnose behaviour before choosing a phase. Interview people across levels and units, review decision delays, customer effects, duplicated work, risk events, turnover and financial capacity.
- In phase 1, ask whether informal leadership and cash can support the next scale of operation. In phase 2, test whether decision concentration is delaying local action; a business with up to 250 employees can still exhibit either informal or bureaucratic coordination, so headcount is not a diagnosis.
Watch for
- Do not fit the organisation retrospectively to a deterministic sequence or blame people for a “natural” crisis. Age does not automatically make managers rigid, alliances do not guarantee renewed growth and more control is not always the cure for delegation. Test alternative explanations and local context.
Organisational growth model (Greiner)
- Identify the management practice that previously enabled growth but now constrains it. That transition point is more actionable than assigning the organisation a phase label.
- Work through the phases and compare their symptoms with evidence from your organisation. Look at decision delays, spans of control, employee discretion, cross unit conflict, customer responsiveness and the amount of management effort consumed by coordination.
Watch for
- Do not treat the sequence as inevitable or the suggested response as a prescription. Organisations can skip, combine or revisit phases, and similar symptoms can have different causes.
Read next
Open the full model articles.
Each comparison links back to the full articles so you can inspect examples, steps, caveats, and related templates before choosing.
Application bridge
Related templates.
Benefits Realization PlanBenefits Realization Plan Purpose. Use this plan to define how the programme will convert component outputs into measurable organizational value. It identifies the intended benefits, their relationship to programme outcomes, the evidence used to assess them, the people accountable for them and the actions needed to transition and sustain them. Application. Develop the plan early, include it withinComponent Transition RequestComponent Transition Request Purpose. Use this request to obtain formal approval to close a programme component and transfer its deliverables, knowledge, responsibilities and benefits to operations, customers or users. It demonstrates that the component has sufficiently satisfied its business case, completed its required deliverables and milestones, and is ready for its final lifecycle transition.Contracts Management PlanContracts Management Plan Purpose. Use this plan to define how programme-level contracts will be administered from award through closure. Its purpose is to ensure that contracted deliverables and services meet cost, schedule, benefit and quality requirements while both buyer and seller fulfil their obligations. Application. The plan builds on the procurement management plan and may be maintained aProgram Communications Management PlanProgram Communications Management Plan Purpose. Use this plan to determine which stakeholders need which programme information, at what level of detail, when, through which method and from which accountable sender. It operationalises the communications strategy and stakeholder engagement plan across cultural, organisational and expertise boundaries. Application. Develop the plan early and refine i