The present article is supposed to describe the research design of the process management survey which was carried out by the Institute for General Management and Organization, Graz University of Technology, in summer 2008.<\/p>\n
The study surveyed Austrian corporations operating in metal and machinery industry with at least 50 employees. Firms were selected randomly and for every firm one executive (CEO, CIO or quality manager) was interviewed. A total of 150 organizations were interviewed (sample size n=150). The average firm in the sample employed 478 people. 68 (i.e. 45,3%) firms employed between 50 and 250 people, 82 (i.e. 54,7%) employed more than 250 people.<\/p>\n
The telephone interview method was adopted to obtain responses to the study\u2019s survey instrument. Although it was a resource intensive option, it was chosen over the standard methods of administrating paper or online surveys for various reasons: (1) to be able to clarify respondents\u2019 queries; (2) to avoid the situation whereby a busy executive or senior manager delegated the task of filling up the survey to a secretary; and (3) and to ensure that most of the responses collected were complete and usable for data analysis.<\/p>\n
All questions on process management were measured on a six point Likert scale (1=\u201dfully disagree\u201d \u2013 6=\u201dfully agree\u201d). In order to facilitate interpretation, scores were aggregated after data collection as follows: score 1 or 2 = \u201cDisagree\u201d, score 3 or 4 = \u201cNeither agree nor disagree\u201d and score 5 or 6 = \u201cAgree\u201d.<\/p>\n
Results of the survey:<\/p>\n
The present article is supposed to describe the research design of the process management survey which was carried out by the Institute for General Management and Organization, Graz University of Technology, in summer 2008. The study surveyed Austrian corporations operating in metal and machinery industry with at least 50 employees. Firms were selected randomly and …<\/p>\n