Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to verify the impact of a series of company’s variables in small and medium-sized companies, which affect their debts degree. We referred to Giacosa (2015) and Broccardo et al. (2016) as a framework, which identified some company’s variables which impact on its financial structure. Our sample contains small and medium-sized enterprises, belonging to the Italian manufacturing sector. The choice of the manufacturing context is linked to the fact that this sector is the one with the highest population in the Italian economic context and is therefore, a representative of the Italian economy. We identified a series of variables affecting the company’s indebtedness, working in a systemic perspective. Indeed, the company has been considered as a system, in which different factors have specific roles in the business (Ferrero, 1968, 1987) and are linked not through a simple cause-effect relationship; but through a sort of concatenation, and this relationship impacts on the debts recourse. In particular, by observing the survey of the reference sample, a relationship between main variables identified by the literature emerged that permits illustration of the company’s debts degree.

Key words: Company’s indebtedness, debts degree, small and medium companies, financial structure.