Creation of a scale dynamic With regard to companies’ scale, it is known that Portuguese companies are too fragmented. According to Eurostat data,2 in 2010, 95 per cent of non-financial companies employed between one and nine workers, while less than 1 per cent employed more than 50.
This restriction limits the possibility of optimising processes, attracting qualified human resources and asserting companies in external markets, while reducing companies’ endogenous capacity for keeping up with markets and technological innovation. In short, it limits productivity gains. Various empirical findings suggest that the differences in scale of companies between the various countries are related to the differences in the quality of their social capital.