Analysis of the interrelationships between KPIs in a small business through temporal causal models

Abstract

This paper provides an analysis of performance measurement system in small enterprises and the importance for owners-managers of knowing those indicators that show the performance of their business. The main objective is to uncover causal relationships between some key performance indicators (KPIs) at small business. The review highlights the importance of studying the KPIs to know the performance of a business and the need to know the causality between them. It is possible to find articles that pursue this objective, but few allow to know the real causality among the studied KPIs. In order to reach the objective set, the causal temporal model was applied, which allowed to discover those indicators that had an impact on the performance of the small business studied. This facilitates the owner-manager to know more deeply his business and to take actions of improvement in function of its improvement.