Why should/does companies grow?

I read the news about Indian Express Group CEO Shekar Gupta not happy about his company's growth. It has grown at just 3% while the print media industry grew by 25%. I also hear salesmen, marketiers, managers being set stiff targets that only grows every quarter/year. Thus making them completely stressed out, leading them to find out shortcuts, sacrifising on the quality of product/service.

I can understand that for public listed companies the share holders' interests must be protected. The share holders want growth in the value of stock and dividends. That is possible only by increased profits. Increased profits is possible only by increased sales, cutting costs, improved efficiency, higher market share etc. All investors who are fundamentals oriented not only look for PE ratio, they also include Growth factor and hence PEG ratio i.e the PE in comparable with annual growth. High PE valuation of Pantaloons, Bharti, Infosys, ICICI Bank etc are justified by their similarly high growth rates.

Good growth is good for all stake holders of the Business. Customers, Investors, Employees, Government, Society. I will illustrate in simple terms how it is good for each one of them.
Customers - They will get same products at lower cost or higher quality or wider range of products or better service or any or all of them.
Supplier - When company grows the order volume of supplier increases which is a good thing for him.

Investors - This is where the main pressure for growth comes from. No investor does not want growth. It could have been phrased as All investors want growth. It is said in a double negative way just to emphasize the point. As illustrated before their returns increases only when comp anies grow. It is not enough if they just grow, their growth have to be accelerated. That is the growth rate should grow.
Employees - Each self respecting employee wants a growth in his salary, perks and position or at least keep his job. The chances of that happening are more when the company grows. When companies don't grow, employees are the first to face the axe.

Government - They get more taxes. Reliance paid 2500 crores in taxes to government. Trade and exports increase. Economy as a whole benefits.
Society - People get more jobs and their income and prosperity improves.
So, growth is self-sustaining, at least it seems looking at points above.

But it doesn't always happen and it takes extra-ordinary effort on the part of Management and Employees to sustain growth. We will see why
1) Competition - Along with us there will be other who want to do well, make money by increasing the market share. This results in our market share being eaten. Even though the overall market is growing, if the competitor grows faster than the market and us, we loose out.
2) Economic Recession - In this scenario the consumer demand and spending decreases and them market in which the company operates decreases. Growth and Recession occurs in cycles difference being former is virtuous and latter vicious. There is not much the company can do to solve this problem.
3) Self Destruction - This happen when the people who matter have vested interests, cheat or are even lazy.

India is in a high economic growth path as of now and it is not very difficult for the companies to grow, but interesting thing is how long is this going to continue? I hope it does for a significantly long time as I would like to cash-in on it and settle down without much of a struggle.