An evaluation of knowledge intensive business services industry efficiency: the Italian case
by Domenico Campisi; Paolo Mancuso; Stefano Luigi Mastrodonato; Donato Morea
International Journal of Business Performance Management (IJBPM), Vol. 22, No. 2/3, 2021

Abstract: Knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) are private enterprises or organisations mainly concerned with providing knowledge-intensive inputs to the business processes of other organisations, represent a core feature of the knowledge-based economy functioning and play an important role in local and regional economies as a source of added value. The paper investigates the application of data envelopment analysis (DEA) in conjunction with financial ratios analysis (FRA) to estimate and compare the performance of the KIBS industry in Italy over the period 2012-2017. In particular, we evaluated the three main segments that identify KIBS services. The empirical investigation proposed reveals that the results of FRA approach do not provide sufficient and complete information on the efficiency of KIBS firms, while major advantages behind using of DEA are related to its structural characteristic in measuring performance and identifying opportunities for possible efficiency improvements by looking at the differences between efficient companies and inefficient ones.

Online publication date: Thu, 22-Jul-2021

The full text of this article is only available to individual subscribers or to users at subscribing institutions.

 
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.

Pay per view:
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.

Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Business Performance Management (IJBPM):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:

    Username:        Password:         

Forgotten your password?


Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.

If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com