DIMENSIONS OF COMPANY PERFORMANCE

Globalization, along with the increasing competition and the uncertainty of today s dynamic business environment, are putting more pressure on companies to constantly seek methods, techniques, and solutions to improve their ability to adapt in order to achieve, to improve, and to maintain performance in every possible manner. In a classical (traditional) approach, the main goal of all organizations is to be profitable, and the financial results (profitability, revenue, expenses, assets, liabilities) are usually the first thing that is considered when it comes to company performance. Though the financial performance is a very important aspect and the ability to generate profit is a crucial factor for a company s success, the overall firm performance is a significantly more complex, extremely vast, and widely used concept. There is no generally accepted and unitary definition; it is a concept that has evolved over time, and has now been extended with two new dimensions: social and environmental. The aim of this article is first of all to present some theoretical and conceptual approaches related to the concept of firm global performance, its definition, and the ways to analyze and measure it, as they have been previously presented in the academic literature, and also to propose an approach to firm performance that goes beyond the economic and financial area, including both financial and non-financial aspects, and to present it as an aggregate of the positive returns given by the financial area, social field, environmental protection, customer satisfaction, and the achievement and development of human capital.