Integrative Literature Synthesis: Converging Gaps Across Systems Theory, Entrepreneurial Lifecycle, and Small Business Failure

Recent work in systems thinking within management and strategy literature indicates that organizational research continues to rely heavily on reductionist and method-specific approaches, despite longstanding recognition that organizations function as complex, adaptive systems. Kunc (2024) demonstrates that both systems thinking and strategic management remain fragmented across multiple schools, with limited integration and only partial treatment of emergent behavior, feedback processes, and transformation over time.

Kunc (2024) further shows that systems thinking tools—such as system dynamics, viable system models, and soft systems methodologies—are typically applied as discrete interventions rather than as components of integrated frameworks guiding ongoing strategy formation and organizational change. His review explicitly calls for greater integration between systems thinking and strategic management to embed systemic perspectives into strategic processes.

Miranda Guerra et al. (2024) reinforce this position through a systematic review of systems thinking and business competitiveness, conceptualizing firms as complex systems characterized by interdependence, feedback, and dynamic adaptation. Their findings indicate that systems thinking supports dynamic capabilities, innovation, and strategic alignment, particularly in environments characterized by uncertainty and nonlinearity.

Similarly, Siriram and du Plessis (2024) demonstrate that systems thinking approaches can support firms in managing complexity and developing capabilities suited to volatile and uncertain conditions.

Collectively, these studies establish that while organizations are widely recognized as complex, open systems, the application of systems thinking remains fragmented and insufficiently integrated into entrepreneurship, small firm failure research, and firm-level lifecycle models. This body of work consistently calls for integrative frameworks that move beyond isolated applications to explain how structural dynamics evolve over time within firms.

The small business failure literature has expanded significantly; however, recent reviews indicate that the field remains conceptually fragmented and heavily oriented toward prediction rather than explanation. Jayasekara et al. (2020) synthesize a broad set of failure determinants but highlight the absence of a consistent definition of business failure and the predominance of models focused on forecasting outcomes rather than examining underlying processes.

Their review further indicates that lifecycle-related concepts are generally treated as correlates of failure risk rather than being integrated into systemic explanations of how vulnerability develops and evolves over time.

Delgado Caramutti et al. (2026) extend this critique through a systematic review and bibliometric analysis, identifying a growing emphasis on predictive modeling and advanced analytical techniques. Despite these advancements, they explicitly identify persistent gaps in conceptual integration, definitional consistency, and longitudinal understanding. Their work calls for process-based and interdisciplinary approaches that examine how failure mechanisms emerge, interact, and evolve over time.

Together, these reviews demonstrate that although the small business failure literature has increased in empirical depth and methodological sophistication, it continues to lack firm-level, systems-oriented frameworks capable of explaining how vulnerability persists or re-emerges as firms evolve.

Entrepreneurial lifecycle research increasingly emphasizes the role of timing, sequencing, and critical decision-making, yet remains largely stage-bounded in its theoretical development. González et al. (2024) identify key early-stage decision domains and show that these decisions have path-dependent effects on venture trajectories. However, their review also highlights fragmentation across decision domains and the absence of systemic models explaining how these decisions interact over time to shape longer-term outcomes.

Cantner et al. (2021) contribute a dynamic lifecycle model at the ecosystem level, demonstrating that entrepreneurial activity follows non-linear and cyclical patterns rather than a single directional progression. Their work addresses limitations in static lifecycle models but remains focused on ecosystem dynamics rather than firm-level structural processes.

Importantly, both streams acknowledge limitations in explaining how transitions occur over time and how underlying mechanisms shape these transitions. As a result, while lifecycle research increasingly recognizes non-linearity and recurrence, it provides limited explanation of how firm-level structural configurations contribute to recurring vulnerability or resilience.

Across systems theory, small business failure research, and entrepreneurial lifecycle literature, a consistent pattern emerges. Systems thinking research calls for integrative approaches capable of capturing complexity, feedback, and temporal change, yet remains underdeveloped at the level of entrepreneurial firms. Small business failure research characterizes failure as dynamic and multifaceted but continues to rely on predictive and classificatory models that do not explain underlying structural processes. Lifecycle research challenges linear stage assumptions but does not specify the firm-level mechanisms that produce recurring vulnerability.

Authors across these streams consistently identify the absence of integrative, firm-level frameworks that connect organizational structure, lifecycle movement, and failure dynamics over time. In particular, the literature does not adequately explain how internal structural configurations contribute to the persistence or recurrence of vulnerability as firms move through cycles of survival, scaling, stabilization, and potential succession.

As a result, entrepreneurial firms are predominantly modeled as progressing through discrete stages or responding to isolated problems, rather than as dynamic systems managing structural pressures that evolve and reconfigure over time.

Recent review articles across systems theory, small business failure, and entrepreneurial lifecycle research consistently identify fragmentation, stage-bounded theorizing, and limited integration of temporal and structural perspectives. Collectively, this body of work establishes the need for frameworks that conceptualize entrepreneurial firms as dynamic systems in which structural conditions evolve, interact, and persist across the lifecycle.

This perspective reframes vulnerability not as the result of isolated events or discrete stages, but as an outcome of interacting structural pressures that develop and re-emerge over time. The Small Business Fatal Issues framework, with its emphasis on recurring operational states and structural pressure patterns, is positioned to engage this gap by providing a firm-level lens for examining how these pressures are generated and contained.

The present synthesis establishes that this gap is explicitly identified across multiple literature streams and provides a basis for advancing future conceptual development.