A self-administered questionnaire was sent to the
general managers of 700 manufacturing organizations
randomly selected from the Kompass Australia
(1999) database. A stratified sampling approach was
used. This involved dividing the sample into five
groups based on the number of employees (a proxy
for size), and selecting firms proportional to the
number of companies in each group. The firms
selected were business units of larger firms, or companies
in their own right. The initial posting of the
survey instrument also included, (a) a letter, addressed
personally to the general manager of each business
unit, explaining the purpose of the study; a tearoff
section allowing respondents to provide their
name and address for a copy of the survey results,
while ensuring anonymity, (b) a reply-paid envelope
for the return of the survey, and (c) a separate replypaid
envelope for the return of the tear-off section.
Three weeks after the initial posting, a reminder letter
was sent to all managers who had not returned
the tear-off section. Two weeks later, each manager
who could not be identified as having responded was
phoned and encouraged to complete the questionnaire.
Additional questionnaires were forwarded
to those who had misplaced the original material.
A total of 155 responses (22%) were received.
Of these, 14 were unusable, mainly due to missing
data on organizational performance. This resulted
in 141 useable responses, a response rate of 20%.
The remaining sample firms had average sales of
$128.2 million and average assets of $88.59 million.
The majority of firms in the sample were
stand-alone companies (59% of the sample) or
divisions of larger companies (37%). The respondents
had been with their firm an average of 11.3
years. Most described themselves either as managers
(61%) or managing directors (23%).