Aplicação da Teoria de Resposta ao Item (TRI) na identificação de indicadores quantitativos discriminantes para a prática de benchmarking empresarial

Abstract

Benchmarking as a management tool is based on practices and metrics. However, there are latent variables that cannot be measured directly. The Item Response Theory (IRT), a statistical technique that is widely explored in the health area, is little explored in the management area. This work seeks to apply the IRT to identify a set of indicators that are discriminative and possible to be used in the practice of business benchmarking. After analysing 31 indicators of 203 companies listed on the São Paulo Stock Exchange, it was possible to identify 21 discriminating indicators divided into 5 factors. It was concluded that IRT is a technique capable of identifying discriminatory indicators with low value of the Root Mean Square Error of Approximation(RMSEA) and that it brings new interpretations of already existing metrics -in the case economic and financial metrics -in addition to facilitating the understanding latent traits.