La DEA nella misurazione degli intangibili e della performance aziendale: un’applicazione ai distretti manifatturieri campani

In the modern economic context, the concept of productivity and business performance depends in greater measure on the efficient management of Intellectual Capital. So the measurement and evaluation of the impacts and value of investments in intellectual capital is a critical obstacle to turning those investments into sources of competitive advantage. In fact, most firms have only a dim notion of what they spend on Intellectual Capital, let alone what they receive from those investments, and, as a result, many of them either under-invest or make ineffective investments. It’s proposed a methodology to evaluate the impact of intangible assets management and knowledge investments on business performance and productivity (in the terms of knowledge productivity), through the examination of the Bests Practices of those enterprises that have already successfully implemented strategies of intangible assets management. The analysis method selected to such purpose is the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA): analysing a set of firms by means of the DEA was obtained a value of relative efficiency and, consequently, a ranking distinguishing efficient and inefficient ones. In this paper, the application of the methodology to the firms of a shoe-manufacturing district located in Campania, permitted to under light the most relevant aspects in the management of intangible assets for an Italian SME.