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26 CHAPTER 2. RPE AT THE BUSINESS UNIT MANAGER LEVEL
for an autonomous organizational body engaged in multiple activities (e.g., purchasing,
production, and sales). Furthermore, the respondent should have a superior within the
organization (in other words, the respondent should not be the CEO). The second benefit
is the possibility to conduct face-to-face interviews, which improves the respondent’s valid
interpretation of and careful responding to the questions. During these interviews, the student
can explain the survey questions (using a strict protocol provided by the researcher)
to the business unit manager who answers the questions in the survey and fills out the
questionnaire.
The observations include data from production business units (17%), service BUs (56%),
financial services (16%), and BUs operating in the not-for-profit sector (18%) 10 . Similarly
diverse responses to the variance of sectors at the BU level were provided on the question
about the respondents firm’s sector. Table 2.1 summarizes the background information on
the respondents’ business units and the firm to which each business unit belongs.
BU size
Firm size
Table 2.1: Summary Statistics on Sample
Panel A - size
N Mean
Std. dev.
of mean
Min. Max.
FTE 325 220 439 10 5.000
Revenue (mio EURO) 292 196 840 1 1.000
FTE 321 14.730 41.771 31 470.123
Revenue (mio EURO) 301 7.775 43.240 4 600.000
Panel B - sector
BU sector Production 54 Firm sector Production 71
Services 181 Services 170
Financial 52 Financial 62
Not-for-profit 57 Not-for-profit 64
10 These percentages sum to 107% because some business units operate in more than one sector. Multiple
answers to the related question are considered valid.