Marchés, organisations de la production et rentabilité des entreprises industrielles françaises (The markets, organisations and profitability of french manufacturing firms)

Our research has endeavoured to exploit recent analyses of products and market diversity in terms of the plurality of worlds of production. We show that there are severals ways to be profitable and there is no hierarchie between them. This study is conducted using a sample data of 1354 French companies from the Banque de France Sheet Data Centre that are active in the intermediate goods and business equipment sectors and have fewer than 2.000 employees. We demonstrate that the diversity of products ( generic or dedicated ) and of organisation ( specifics or not specifics assets ) does not create differences of capital structure or profitabilities. In fact this homogeneity express the difficulties for lenders to evaluate firms and appreciate their capacities to manage their own word. That means the capacities to manage the coherence of their action system, i.e. a choice of products and of organisation which allow them to be profitable.