How do small companies measure their performance

This study reports the results of questionnaire surveys with companies that hire less than 20 em-ployees in Finland the UK on how performance be measured. The results are: First, both the Fin-nish and UK companies rely on employees, production lines and activities to formulate their per-formance measurement system. Second, both the Finnish and UK companies use both the financial and non-financial variables to measure their performance despite the UK companies tend to em-phasise more on the financial variables. Third, factor analysis shows that environmental and non-human production factors play a major part on the performance of these small companies. The results make major contributions to the business community and managers in decision-making processes. Future research could expand the sample size and include other methods of capturing data for analysis. Key words: performance measurements, small companies, questionnaire surveys, financial and non-financial variables. JEL Classifications: M1, M4, M41. 1