Organizational Culture, Organizational Structure and Human Resource Management as Bases for Business Process Orientation and their Impacts on Organizational Performance

This article presents the main findings of a survey conducted with the aim of describing the interplay of the variables organizational structure, organizational culture and human resource management — considering the assumptions of the business process orientation (BPO) approach — and of identifying the relationship between these constructs and organizational performance, based on the four critical dimensions of the balanced scorecard technique: financial, customer/market, processes/capabilities and learning/growth. We used data from a sample of 368 medium and large Brazilian companies. By means of structural equations modeling we analyzed the associations between the constructs of the proposed nomothetic model. The results point to the existence of positive and statistically significant associations between the constructs investigated, except for the relationship between organizational structure and organizational performance. The results, including with respect to the relatively weak association between elements of organizational structure and performance, suggest that BPO initiatives can have a strong effect on organizational performance, adding to discussions of the theme.