Not that economic orthodoxy is a good measure of reality, but there is a theory of the optimum size of a firm that will determine its size.
There are natural monopolies which grow without apparent limit, or rather, whose growth is constrained only by the total size of the market, rather than some lower bound. For these, there's always the capability of adding additional profitable production.
For other businesses, there are natural constraints on scale: a regional market or operation which can only sustain so much business, high scale-related costs, etc.
As two canonical examples, telecommunications scales quite well with scale, and in the history of telecoms we find a long history of monopolies: Western Union in the telegraph age, AT&T in the telephony age, and now Comcast in the broadband era. Once you've got cables strung, your primary limitation is last-mile wiring. But it's the long-distance and total bandwidth capacities which give you maximum value.
Concrete is a counterexample: there's a limited local market (whatever local building activity will support), and your transport costs are very high: concrete is heavy stuff. Concrete tends to be a pretty localized industry, though it might be possible for a single firm to develop out of what are essentially multiple regional markets.
Growth, where possible, profitable, and sustainable for a business, is often pursued, but it's not a necessary condition for success.
There are natural monopolies which grow without apparent limit, or rather, whose growth is constrained only by the total size of the market, rather than some lower bound. For these, there's always the capability of adding additional profitable production.
For other businesses, there are natural constraints on scale: a regional market or operation which can only sustain so much business, high scale-related costs, etc.
As two canonical examples, telecommunications scales quite well with scale, and in the history of telecoms we find a long history of monopolies: Western Union in the telegraph age, AT&T in the telephony age, and now Comcast in the broadband era. Once you've got cables strung, your primary limitation is last-mile wiring. But it's the long-distance and total bandwidth capacities which give you maximum value.
Concrete is a counterexample: there's a limited local market (whatever local building activity will support), and your transport costs are very high: concrete is heavy stuff. Concrete tends to be a pretty localized industry, though it might be possible for a single firm to develop out of what are essentially multiple regional markets.
Growth, where possible, profitable, and sustainable for a business, is often pursued, but it's not a necessary condition for success.