A theory and/or method contributing to an understanding of the key success factors in an
industry would without doubt be of considerable academic and practical interest. The key success factor concept has, however, been used in a rather diverse way in the literature, as will be
shown shortly. It is the purpose of this paper to sort out the uses of the concept to date, and,
on the basis of this, to propose a new view of key success factors. This view will then be
related to existing theories and methods, leading to an agenda for empirical research