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2.3. SAMPLE AND MEASUREMENT 31
Comparability of the Business Unit Comparability of the business unit (abbreviated:
comparability) measures the degree of comparability of the business unit’s assets to
the assets of other business units or organizations.
Comparability is measured with seven items (Q8-14) relating to the comparability of a
number of potentially critical assets to the assets of peers. These assets (or: resources)
include: equipment, stock, systems, core-business employees, knowledge, brand image, and
client portfolio. Because a high score on the individual measures indicates uniqueness as
opposed to comparability, these scores are reversed.
Because the relative importance of each of these assets can vary amongst organizations to
a large extent, respondents were asked to assign weights to the various assets (Q15). The
weights, distributed as points over the various assets, indicate each asset’s relative importance
to the business unit. To calculate comparability of the business unit, the weighted
scores are summed so that a high score on the measure indicates asset comparability.
Comparability of the business unit = (equipment * weight) +
(stock * weight) + (systems * weight) + (core-business employees * weight) +
(knowledge * weight) + (brand image * weight) + (client portfolio * weight)
Comparability is used to calculate the previously described common uncertainty variable.
For this purpose, environmental uncertainty is multiplied by the ‘comparability’ score.
This calculation yields a scale with a boosted uncertainty score if comparability is high
and a reduced uncertainty score if comparability is low. The multiplied variables construct
the measure for common uncertainty (CUNC).
Comparability also serves another role in this study. Comparability of the business unit
is also used for hypothesis 3, where it functions as a stand-alone moderator of the effect
of information asymmetry on RPE use. This approach does not lead to problems with
multicollinearity, as discussed in section 2.4.3.
Information Asymmetry Information asymmetry is measured with a seven-item measure,
largely based on Dunk (1993). There are two differences from Dunk’s original instrument.
First, the wording has been altered to fit better with the specific context of business
unit managers. Second, one question was added to differentiate between knowledge about
internal versus external factors that might influence the business unit performance (following
Kruis 2008). All items load on one factor. Overall, the construct for information
asymmetry shows good internal reliability. Information asymmetry was calculated by averaging
the scores on all items. Table 2.4 summarizes the construction of the information
asymmetry variable.