GAZELLES: HOW DIFFERENT DEFINITIONS AND CRITERIA AFFECT THE CATEGORIZATION AND UNDERSTANDING OF FAST-GROWING COMPANIES

<p style="text-align: justify;">Gazelles represent fast-growing companies that significantly contribute to company growth and creation of new jobs. Different definitions of gazelles and criteria for their categorization are mentioned in the literature. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that definitional differences and conceptual understanding of gazelles, as well as the criteria for classifying them, significantly affect the number of companies that can be categorized as "fast-growing". This paper analyses companies from Bosnia and Herzegovina and reveals significant deviations in the number and sector of companies that may be considered fast-growing. The deviations depend on the period of company observation (three-year vs. five-year period), as well as the applied criteria (income growth vs. increase in the number of employees). Likewise, the application of different definitions of growth, different criteria for measuring company growth, different indicators (relative vs. absolute) as well as different time frames significantly affect the interpretation of growth. The argument argues that such instances significantly affect the categorization and registration of companies that may or may not be considered fast-growing. Our research also confirms that workplace generators are precisely those firms whose expansive growth lasts beyond the initial three years but once they operate beyond four or more years, their power to generate jobs decreases significantly. The results of this analysis also indicate that in Bosnia and Herzegovina, fast-growing companies are, to a certain extent, new job generators.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>JEL:</strong> M13, M21, L25</p>