O objetivo deste artigo é analisar a perceção e sensibilidade ao risco das “PME de excelência” portuguesas e constatar quais os benefícios que retiram da gestão do risco. É também objetivo investigar se as empresas entendem a gestão do risco como algo de positivo e se apresentam maturidade na identificação e tratamento do risco. O método de análise utilizado é quantitativo e exploratório. Numa primeira fase, foi efetuado um inquérito às empresas e realizada uma análise descritiva dos resultados. Numa fase posterior, foi efetuada a análise fatorial de componentes principais. Os resultados apresentam quatro fatores com relevância na análise do risco empresarial, nomeadamente, os fatores relacionados com os riscos de funcionamento, competitividade, adaptação e mercado. As empresas associam o risco de funcionamento a características internas, o risco de competitividade a condições de diferenciação e concorrência, o risco de adaptação ao ambiente que as rodeia e o risco de mercado a variáveis financeiras.

The objective of this paper is to analyze the perception and sensitivity to risk of Portuguese “Excellence SME” and underline the benefits from risk management. It also investigates whether companies understand risk management as something positive and show maturity in the identification and treatment of risk. The used method is quantitative and exploratory. A survey to Portuguese companies with the classification of excellence is made and a descriptive statistics analysis is initially carried out. At a later stage a factorial analysis of the principal components is performed. The results show four factors that are relevant in the business risk factor analysis, namely those related with operational, competitiveness, market and adaptation risks. Firms associate operational risk to internal features, whereas competitiveness risk is associated with differentiation conditions and competition, adaptation risk to their environment and market risk is associated with financial variables.

Although Portugal registers a large number of protected brand names, its economic turnover is very low when compared to the other southern EU-Member States. To identify and analyze the main reasons of this weak economic significance of the Portuguese quality traditional agrifood products are the main goals of this paper. The main conclusions from the data gathered in step one of the research, which main goal was to understand the main reasons why agricultural firms do not adhere to the PDO/PGI food systems, are related with several issues, namely: the economic and transactions costs of certification, the heavy bureaucracy related to the certification process, the small difference in prices between PDO/PGI products and standard products, within the same reference market, and the preferences of Portuguese consumers. According to the respondents, Portuguese consumers do not know nor socially valorize PDO/PGI products, and privilege (i) traditional/local standard products, instead of PDO/PGI products, and (ii) proximity marketed relationships. These latter findings contribute to highlight, not only why the interviewed firms do not adhere to the PDO/PGI systems, but also why the Portuguese PDO/PGI domestic market is narrow when compared with the ones of southern EU-Member States.