Competição, orientação estratégica e desempenho em ambiente turbulento: uma abordagem empírica

Abstract

This study will address the proposed research question, namely, identification of factors which influence the performance of companies operating in a turbulent environment - some Brazilian companies, belonging to the manufacturing industry, and active during the 1996-2001 period. This interlude of time was characterized by intense changes in the national and international macroeconomic scenarios. Financial and macroeconomic data were collected from secondary sources through a process called verbatim data mining. In a way tounderstand the performance of the focused companies concerning the diverse macro and microeconomic variables that determine the competitive environment, the strategic orientation, the allocation of resources and the macroeconomic context, a structural model - inwhich the relation among the various constructs expresses the research hypotheses - is proposed. The methodology employed in the measurement and analysis of the relation among constructs was the PLS Partial Least Squares modeling due to the formative nature of the constructs, and the flexibility of this method in terms of the sample size and sample data distribution. As a result, relations with different intensity and significance, were identified among strategic orientation and performance, as well as among performance and competitiveenvironment - indicating a clear predominance of environment as a determinant factor of performance, when analyzing companies with revenues between R$10 and R$100 Million, an equilibrium for companies with revenues between R$100 Million and R$1 Billion, and ahigher influence of strategic orientation among companies with revenues over R$1 Billion.