Performance of Brazilian companies: year effects, line of business and individual firms

Performance varies. This simple statement conceals many intricacies of strategic management. Because performance varies among individual firms, researchers can explore factors that differentiate these firms and explain why some firms are consistently outperforming others. Because performance varies among industries, researchers can explore structural characteristics of different branches of accounting as a source of explanation. Because performance varies with time, researchers can explore environmental and internal dynamic elements that drive strategic decision-making. In reality, measuring and analyzing performance is a very complicated issue when performance varies simultaneously from firm to firm, from industry to industry and from year to year. The theoretical discussion behind this question is the relative importance of the industrial organization derived approach to strategy versus the resource-based view. This paper analyzes the composition of performance variance of a set of Brazilian firms from 1998 to 2001. The results demonstrate that firm effects are still dominant, with year and industry effects being lower, as previous studies with North American firms have indicated. Key words: performance; strategy; variance components; Brazilian firms