Enterprise management in Albania suffers from a lack of strategic planning, but is capable of responding to unexpected situations.
The World Bank's 2025 Enterprise Survey data showed that enterprise management was rated with an overall index of 44.8 points, below the Europe and Central Asia average of 52.6 points.
The strongest point of Albanian businesses turns out to be the ability to act when a concrete problem arises, where with 78.4 points they even exceed the regional average, which indicates a type of operational management that is quite efficient in resolving current crises, the survey data reveals.
However, the ability to manage crises is not accompanied by the formulation and achievement of long-term objectives.
The figures show a drastic drop when it comes to the number of key performance indicators (KPIs) being monitored, with Albania scoring only 24.5 points, almost half the regional value. This shows that local companies tend to manage more through intuition or experience, rather than through measurable data.
Also, the time focus of objectives and their achievement remain at low levels, reflecting a difficulty in setting medium and long-term goals, where the difference with the European average (58.9 points) is quite large.
While large businesses score 80.2 points for firing or rehiring underperforming employees, medium-sized businesses score only 29.2 points. This suggests that large corporations have more rigorous accountability structures, while medium-sized businesses appear to have more difficulty implementing punitive or corrective measures for performance.
Overall, while Albania is competitive in incentivizing managers through bonuses, it still lags behind in creating a sustainable meritocracy system for the rest of the staff compared to the standards of upper-middle-income countries.
The survey reveals a gap between bonuses for managers and promotions for ordinary employees. Albania performs relatively well in the performance bonus score for managers (43.7 points), even exceeding the regional average (33.6 points). This shows that business owners in Albania strongly believe in financial incentives for managers as a means to increase efficiency.
However, when we look at performance-based promotions for non-managerial staff, the figure rises to 53.6 points, but still lags behind the region (65.7 points) and upper-middle-income countries (70.1 points). While managers are more often rewarded with money, promotions for other employees are still not as closely linked to their performance as in other countries.
Another critical indicator is knowledge of objectives. With only 24.8 points, this is one of the lowest indicators for Albania. This means that even when the company has specific goals, they are not clearly communicated to employees. There is a major communication gap.
Management may have a plan, but ordinary employees often do not know what the specific objectives of the product or service are. In Europe and Central Asia, this indicator is almost twice as high (41.2 points), which proves that Albanian businesses need more internal transparency and communication strategies. /Monitor.al/
