Despite of their significant contribution to employment and to the economy in general, the performance of informal and small construction firms is still low and has been associated with limited human and working capital, poor technology, limited access to differentiated markets and productive resources. Among the addressed options to overcome these problems is by linking them to relatively large contractors. Few empirical studies which have associated the performance of these firms to linkages cannot show the extent to which linkages explain the performance and ignore the possibilities of firms participating in active linkages to perform differently due to diverse structures governing them. While controlling for selected firms? factors, this paper tries to examine the role of linkages in explaining firms? performance. The results reveal that firms with reliable customers, access to organisational subcontracting arrangements perform better than their counterparts