Guest editorial

International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management

ISSN: 1741-0401

Article publication date: 26 June 2007

513

Citation

Martinez, V. (2007), "Guest editorial", International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Vol. 56 No. 5/6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijppm.2007.07956eaa.001

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2007, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Guest editorial

About the Guest EditorsVeronica Martinez is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Business Performance. Veronica’s major research interests revolve around the field of measuring and managing business performance, target setting and organisational learning, and value creation in strategy management. She works with leading organisations and members of the Cranfield’s Business Performance Roundtable to study the impact of performance measurement systems and the factors that positively affect the performance of these organisations. Veronica has been working in the strategy management field since 1998. She is a visiting Professor at Basilicata University in Italy. Before her academic career, she worked in the automotive industry, where she coordinated the launching of a new manufacturing quality assurance system. Veronica has worked with organisations such as Daimler-Chrysler, Highland Spring, Alcan Chemicals and COMIMSA. She has consultancy experience on IBM Greenock and Daks Group. She has also participated in different projects including European projects with Pegout, Fidia, Iparlat and EFESO.

Zoe Radnor is a Senior Lecturer in Operations Management at Warwick Business School. Her research and publications are in the areas of performance measurement and management, improvement and innovation for both private and public sector. She has recently been Deputy Director of a three year research project evaluating a government reward scheme as well Project Manager of a research project for the Scottish Executive which evaluated how “lean” techniques are and can be used in the public sector. In 2005 she won the Warwick University Award for Teaching Excellence. She is a member of BAM Council and co-editor of the International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management.

Welcome to this special edition of the International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management. The focus of this double issue is performance measurement and management systems in the public and private sectors. As members of the research community we might ask: Are performance measurement and management systems on the top of public and private corporate agendas?

Research data suggests that up to 44 per cent of organisations worldwide have redesigned their performance measurement systems or implemented new systems (the figures are: 57 per cent in the UK, 46 per cent in the USA and 26 per cent in Germany and Austria (Rigby, 2001; Marr et al., 2004; Speckbacher et al., 2003; Franco et al., 2004)) over the past few years. Other studies show that, an average $1 billion sales company is reported to spend 25,000 per days per year planning and measuring performance[1]. This intense industrial activity has stimulated the expected response from the business support community, with consultants, software vendors and conference organisers the world over developing new products and services to meet the needs of the industrial community. In the academic sector, the level of interest in the subject has been no less intense.

This special issue explores an interesting and unconventional mix of papers on the service measurement and management; we have studies from the banking, medical and hotels sectors, and others studies reporting findings from the perspectives of sales, services and customers satisfaction.

The papers presented in this special issue represent a thorough selection of the best papers from the 2006 EUROMA and the 2006 EURAM Conferences tracks in performance measurement and management. From the two conference tracks a short list of 19 papers were drawn up and the authors invited to submit a complete article for review. In response to this, 14 papers were submitted and reviewed with eight papers deemed suitable for publication in this special issue.

The first paper by Zoe Radnor from Warwick Business School and David Barnes from the Royal Holloway University of London sets an historic perspective on performance measurement and management (PMM) within operations management (OM) across the manufacturing, service and public sectors. It concludes with a set of reflections on and undercover relevant lessons and issues about PMM in OM.

The second paper by André A. de Waal from Maastricht School of Management and Vincent Coevert from Erasmus University Rotterdam explores within the banking sector the effects of performance management on the organizational results. The longitudinal quantitative and qualitative analysis of two commercial divisions of the banking sector demonstrate that implementing a performance management system increases organisational results but under certain conditions. One of these conditions was reported to do with behavioural factors, such as the manner in which the divisional manager applied performance management and enticed his people into using the new system.

The third paper from De Toni, Fornasier, Montagne and Nonino presents a case study in a medical service authority. Their study proposes a performance measurement system (PMS) for facility management (FM), which shares some indicators among FM service provider and customer. It demonstrates that the proposed PMS allows a better integration and coordination of the actors involved in an outsourcing services contract.

The fourth and fifth papers take a sales service perspective. Cavalieri, Gaiardelli and Lerace from the University of Bergamo propose an after sales service performance measurement system. The framework allows enterprises to provide a specific performance model to monitor and control the after sales service efficiency and effectiveness and manage their corporate after sales strategic and tactical performances. Then, the paper by Sigala and Kalotina Chalkiti from the University of the Aegean explores the use of tacit knowledge to improve business performance in the Greek hotel industry. The survey results reveal the importance of the two stage process transformation of tacit knowledge to business performance.

The sixth and seventh papers position their survey research in the manufacturing and services sectors. The paper by Martinéz-Costa and Martinéz-Lorente analyses the effects of ISO 9000 certification on company results finding contradictory conclusions. The certification can actually improve business performance but also reduce profitability. The seventh paper by Fernández-González and Prado Prado discusses the measurement and analysis of customer satisfaction. They conclude that performance could be greater if companies employed a combination of methods to evaluate customer satisfaction.

The final paper by Garengo and Bernardi from the University of Padua investigates the performance measurement as a key system in supporting company development. Their research shows that a performance measurement system is presented as a key managerial system that can support qualitative growth and promote the competitiveness of small and medium enterprises.

The papers in this special issue have attempted to give a cross section of papers within the theme of performance measurement and management in the public and private sectors from the banking to the medical service authority, from the use to the effects and from performance management to productivity all which attempt. In some way, to create an understanding in which performance measurement and management is rewarded and benefits are redistributed.

NoteResearch data provided by the Hackett Group.

Veronica Martinez, Zoe RadnorGuest Editors

References

Franco, M., Bourne, M. and Neely, A. (2004), “Understanding strategic performance measurement systems and their impact on organizational outcomes: a systematic review”, working paper

Marr, B., Neely, A., Franco, M., Wilcox, M., Adams, C. and Manson, S. (2004), “Business performance measurements – what is the state of the art?”, Conference Proceedings Performance Measurement Association, Edinburgh, UK, 28-30 July, pp. 627-.634

Rigby, D. (2001), “Management tools and techniques: a survey”, California Mgmt Review, Vol. 43 No. 2, pp. 139–60Speckbacher, G., Bischof, J. and Pfeiffer, T. (2003), “A descriptive analysis on the implementation of balanced scorecards in German-speaking countries”, Management Accounting Research, Vol. 14, pp. 361–87

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