Research Method
A survey mailed to 140 of Australia's largest companies in nine industry categories produced 78 usable responses. Questions were based on a seven point scale related to the firm's strategic priorities, and the extent of adoption and benefits obtained from various management techniques and management accounting practices. Organization performance was measured with an instrument developed from questions related to the firm's performance across ten dimensions relative to competitors1. The respondents also ranked each dimension to reflect its important to the company. The final performance score was calculated by multiplying the performance measure by the measure of importance.
Factor analysis was used to test whether the questionnaire items measured the intended constructs. This analysis generated the various constructs and statistics listed in the table below adapted from Chenhall and Langfield-Smith's Table 3, p. 250.