Best performance-best practices: the case of Italian manufacturing companies

The aim of this paper is to analyse the best practices of a sample of manufacturing companies that have achieved lasting best performance in terms of solvency, growth and profitability. The paper analyses the correlation between size and qualitative-relational growth. Through cluster analysis, three groups of companies were defined with different levels of qualitative and relational contents. The cluster result is the dependent variable of an ordered logit regression, while the explanatory variables are performance and feature variables. The model confirms that size and growth in size significantly influence the probability of qualitative and relational contents in companies. Moreover, the results suggest that the other relevant determinants are: management, location, export growth, type of make and competitiveness factors.