Almost-invisible firms and the economic crisis: An exploratory analysis and a research agenda

The paper provides an explorative analysis of the performance of 1262 self-employed and non- listed micro, small and medium firms adhering to an entrepreneurial association (“Confartigianato Imprese”) in the Eastern Piedmont region, in Italy, on the basis of a manually compiled dataset of economic and organizational data referred to the period before and during the COVID-19 economic turmoil, from 2018 to 2020. Since information on these organizations is scant and rare, the results of the paper, although preliminary, shed light on firms that would be “otherwise invisible” to researchers, market analysts and institutions. The paper suggests a research agenda for contributing to uncover the features and the potential for growth of these firms, which represent the backbone of the economy but constantly face sustainability threats. In addition, the paper aims at encouraging improvements in the performance measurement of firms with minimum and differentiated reporting obligations, which nevertheless share the common characteristics of having small size, uncertain growth opportunity, local or limited reach.