Performance measurement and management in smes: Discussion of preliminar results from an Italian survey

Abstract

Performance measurement and management (PMM) is a topic of increasing interest both in the academic and industrial ambits. While a large number of frameworks, case studies and surveys are available for large enterprises, little research has focused on small and medium enterprises (SMEs). As a consequence of that, little knowledge exist about the SME adoption of performance measurement systems, their use of financial and not financial indicators, the benefits in terms of strategy implementation and alignment. This paper present and discuss the preliminary results obtained from a survey research carried out within Italian SMEs. Interesting remarks are highlighted in terms of PMM diffusion, best practices and benefits in SMEs. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.