Performance Improvements for Romanian SMEs and Their Predictors

• Main Authors: Sorin-Romulus Berinde, Laura-Maria Herța
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-07-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: performance; sustainable SMEs; local development; managerial consultancy services; excessive taxation; legislative regulations
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/15/8202

The corporate governance of Romanian SMEs states that these companies have been less and less able to generate performance over the last few years. An average number of 1.273 SMEs per year have been included in the study, coming from all the eight local development regions of Romania. The data covers a period of 14 financial years, between 2005 and 2018. The findings showed, after statistical computations using regression models, that the performance of Romanian SMEs depended on the level of external managerial consultancy that corporate governance received from specialized companies and on the increasing level of wages. Given the high flexibility potential of SMEs, these choices are seen as tailored actions and strategies to compete successfully and support sustainable performance in the local context where its trend is downward. Moreover, the act of achieving performance at present is upheld by the performance attained in previous financial years. The impact of these factors could be established as a matter of priority in a long-term approach, for a time lag of up to 3 years. Moreover, the performance of companies covering all the local development regions is influenced only to a small degree by taxation levels, by the frequency of tax supervision performed by government institutions, by the capacity of corporate governance to be up to date with legislative change or by the self-financing of the activity conducted by the companies.