Corporations, like products, go through various stages of development from birth to maturity to decline. Although there is conceptual agreement among management theoreticians and practitioners that corporations go through life cycles, there is little agreement as to the nature and...

The first part of the article posited a segmentation of corporate life cycles into four stages: birth, youth, maturity and resurrection. A review of the characteristics of each of the corporate life stages indicated that the role of management and the planning and control systems are quite...