Bringing Export Performance Metrics into Annual Reports: The PERFEX Scorecard

Abstract

At a time when exporting activity is becoming a major resource for creating firms' value and national economic wealth, it is surprising that annual company reports rarely distinguish between domestic market performance and the performance of export markets' operations. Even more rarely do annual reports provide information on annual indicators of specific export ventures performance. Shareholders might assume that if executives choose not to disclose export information in annual reports their exporting activity is not relevant or not successful. Trying to overcome this state of affairs, the authors develop and test a new measure for assessing the Annual Performance of an Export Venture (the APEV scale). The new measure comprises five dimensions: 1) annual export venture's financial performance; 2) annual export venture's strategic performance; 3) annual export venture's achievement; 4) contribution of the export venture to annual exporting operations; and 5) satisfaction with annual export venture's overall performance. In addition, the APEV scale is used to generate a scorecard of PERFormance in EXporting (the PERFEX scorecard) to be included in annual reports. The PERFEX scorecard allows the assessment of export performance at the corporate level while comparatively evaluating all export ventures of the firm. Both the scale and the scorecard are expected to help disclose export (ventures') performance and are provided as useful instruments for annual planning, management, monitoring, and improvement of exporting programs.