Operationalizing performance in publicly listed AEC firms: The dominent dimensions

Organization performance is one of the most important constructs in management research, whereas determination of organization performance is essential for gaining robust results. Many organizations are investing considerable amount of resource implementing measures that reflect all dimensions of their performance. It is reported in the literature that consideration is being given to what should be measured today, but little attention is being paid to the question of what should be measured tomorrow. Despite numerous topics that have been demonstrated in the literature on performance, limited attention is paid to its measurement in empirical studies. The operationalization of organization performance provides rich implications for both researchers and practitioners. This issue is becoming more prominent in construction industry (AEC firms: Architect, Engineers and General Contractors), where the industry processes are typically prone to risks, which ultimately affects organizations' performance. The main objective of the paper is to explore various factors contributing to the performance of construction firms, making it more predictable, rather than measuring a single-item indicator. The article is capturing the different operationalization aspects of performance in construction industry. It presents an extension to the work done by one of the co-authors on Dominant Dimensions of Performance. Furthermore, the paper addresses two issues in the proposed performance operationalization, (1) the dimension, establishing which measures are appropriate to the research context: and (2) selection and combination of measures, establishing which measures can be usefully combined. Therefore, an overall concept rather than narrow, strictly economic criteria will be presented.