Relações entre fatores contingenciais de empresas do setor da construção civil e a importância atribuída a indicadores de desempenho

Abstract

The aim of this research was analyze the link between contingency factors of Construction’s companies and the importance attributed by the managers of these organizations to their performance indicators, classified in the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) perspective. This research can be defined as descriptive and, predominantly, quantitative. A structured questionnaire, which it was divided into four groups of variables, was administered to managers of 29 companies. The first group of variables was composed of factors related to the manager’s features, while the second one was related to the companies. The third group was formed by factors related to the performance measurement criteria adopted by the companies. Finally, the last group involved 33 performance indicators, which were classified according to the dimensions of the BSC: financial, customer, internal business processes, and learning and growth. To process the collected data, two statistical techniques were used in this research: the descriptive analysis of variables and the analysis of Spearman Coefficient, to investigate associations between the contingency factors and the importance attributed to the performance indicators of companies. According to the results, we identified that most of managers is between 31 and 40 years old, has higher education, and has professional experience over 11 years. Concerning the selected companies, most of them has experience between 10 and 20 years, is considered small company, present two levels of hierarchical structure, and has standardized and improved systems or has planned, supervised and reviewed processes. Regarding the performance measurement criteria, most of companies revealed that they select the indicators that are widely used in Construction’s companies. Besides that, they indicated there is a standardization and regularity in the performance measurement procedure and they make reports about performance every six months. The results suggest that the performance measurement criteria have a stronger influence than the features of managers and Construction’s companies, regards the importance attributed to the financial, and the learning and growth indicators. Based on the results, the importance attributed to the indicators of the customers’ dimension indicated independence in relation to the managers’ features. However, this importance was influenced by two companies’ features and one feature related to the measurement criteria, they are: time of operation, formalization of the operational process and procedure for the performance measurement. To conclude, the results suggested that the contingency factors, related to the companies’ features and the measurement criteria, affect the importance provided to indicators of the internal processes dimension. Besides that, the contingency factors influence to a lesser extent the personal features of managers.