The first of the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Reports was launched in 1979. That first report also relied on survey data for complementing information not otherwise available. Today, the Executive Opinion Survey—also known as the “Voice of the Business Community”—has become one of the largest executive polls of its kind, collecting the perceptions of over 14,000 business executives in more than 140 countries worldwide. As described in this chapter, the insight into critical drivers of a country’s development provided by the survey is not available from other sources. Drawing on investment decision makers of each country allows for a relevant and unique portrait of the business operating environment of each economy covered in this Report. As with all perception data, it is crucial to employ stringent processes while administering the survey in each country in order to collect a representative sample of the country’s economic structure as well as minimizing the risk of cultural bias. For this reason, the Forum works closely with its network of over 160 Partner Institutes to carry out the Survey at a national level. Therefore, along with the data-editing measures described in the second part of this chapter, the strong collaboration with the Partner Institutes and their commitment to following the guidelines is essential. Together these allow us to deliver this unique and strong dataset feeding into The Global Competitiveness Report 2015–2016.

Reference

Browne, C., A. Di Battista, T. Geiger, and T. Gutknecht. 2014. “The Executive Opinion Survey: The Voice of the Business Community.” The Global Competitiveness Report 2014–2015. Geneva: World Economic Forum. 85–96.