Relação entre a vantagem competitiva e o desempenho operacional da firma a partir do uso de métricas das demonstrações contábeis

Abstract

The strategic management researchers usually investigate the determinants of firm performance based on two alternative frameworks: (i) some of them argue that the firm performance is explained/determined mainly by economic and specific factors of the industry where the firm operates (PORTER, 1980; 1985; GJERDE; KNIVSFL; SAETTEM, 2010); (ii) and others argue that the firm performance is explained/determined mainly by the idiosyncratic characteristics of the firm, the assets/resources which provide the basis for a competitive advantage (COFF , 1999 and Barney, 2001). So, based on accounting metrics/indexes obtained from the firm financial statements, this study investigated whether the relationship between competitive advantage and operational performance of a firm is better explained by exogenouscharacteristics (industry features, as level of concentration and degree of unpredictability of the industry) or by its endogenous resources (assets structure of the firm). Additional tests were made in order to verify whether the exogenous characteristics moderate the relation between endogenous characteristics and the firm performance; and to verify howthe firm size effect influence this moderated relation (if confirmed). The data were selected from the database of Economatica, a Brazilian specialized company in information for the capital market. The sample included financial statement data from January 1996 to September 2014, in a quarterly basis, and the firms data were grouped into sectors of activity according to the classification of the North American IndustryClassification System (NAIC). In order to run the tests, some indexes/ratios (based on financial data) were calculated: composition of the balance sheet; ratio between some accounts and equity assets or liabilities; concentration indexes and industry dynamics; competition ratios; and market dynamism and environmental dynamism indexes. Thetests were based on hierarchical model approuch with repeated measures involving serial and nested regressions, estimated by maximum likelihood. The test results suggest that (i) the idiosyncratic features are more explicative for the firm performance than theindustry features; (ii) the relation between firm idiosyncratic resources and firm performance are sensitive to exogenous firm factors (industry characteristics); (iii) and the moderating effect of industry characteristics on the relationship between the idiosyncratic features and the firm performance is sensitive to firm size.