Editorial

Citation

Burgess, T. and Heap, J. (2013), "Editorial", International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Vol. 62 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijppm.2013.07962faa.001

Editorial

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Volume 62, Issue 6.

This issue of the IJPPM contains five standard papers and one reflective practice piece; collectively they address various themes. A number of the papers address strategic matters; while another featured theme is performance in the public services. Three of the papers originate from India, the other contexts visited are Greece, the USA and Australia. In the first paper Srivastava and Sushil present an intricate contribution that focuses performance measurement and management on the link between strategy and operations; and not just, as is often the case, on operational matters. Their approach is particularly interesting since it adopts a mixed-method style, combining interpretive structural modelling with statistical analysis to arrive at a model of how strategic performance factors are linked. Indeed their main contribution appears to be in developing the methodology they use in their study rather than the specific content of the analysed relationships.

In the second paper Chatzoglou, Chatzoudes, Vraimaki and Diamantidis set out to measure the level of service quality performance in an innovative form of public sector delivery. In 2002 the Greek government set up a nation-wide network of one-stop shops where a citizen can go to gain access to any public service. The authors apply SERVQUAL, a standard method of measuring service quality, to a sample of service users and service providers. They generate a sizeable data set (843 usable questionnaire responses) which they analyse using multivariate analysis. Overall the service quality is judged to be well above average but there are some significant failings on three out of the five component indices that make up the overall SERVQUAL index. The key finding of interest here is in the good performance of the innovative, one-stop shops.

The use of incentives such as performance-related pay (PRP) continues to be a controversial topic, bedevilled as the topic is with, at best, inconclusive evidence and, at worst, evidence of ineffectiveness. In the next paper the authors (Jeffrey, Dickinson and Einarsson) focus on a particular range of incentives to encourage individual performance, i.e. tangible (non-cash) incentives used within the organisation in furtherance of recognition and reward. They use a large sample survey targetted at those responsible for incentive management in the sampled organisations, and received 171 responses to their questionnaire. Jeffrey et al. identify the major type of incentive used but what seems more interesting is that companies appear not to measure explicitly the value for money of their incentive schemes – instead company managers appear to rely on their belief that the schemes are worthwhile. This seems to echo the evidence that, despite the ineffectiveness of PRP, managers still believe in its usefulness.

Industrial or business clusters continue to attract the interest of researchers, practitioner and policy makers. This phenomenon whereby firms operating in a common business sector come together, often in close physical proximity, for mutual assistance has been increasingly identified over the last three decades as a way of improving performance. In their paper Singh and Shrivastava concentrate on this context by studying a rice mill cluster in India. They test a multiple regression model linking performance of cluster members to five factors using data from 31 rice mills in a cluster. They confirm the most important and significant factor to be proximity to the cluster, with business environment as the next most important variable affecting performance.

It is a fairly well-known fact that Lean production originated in the automotive industry of Japan and since then has spread world-wide. However, in some parts of the globe, Lean is still a relatively new way of improving manufacturing performance, even within the automotive industry. Gupta, Acharya and Patwardhan carry out a case study of an Indian tyre manufacturer, an area of industry that they identify as still getting to grips with Lean. A key component of the methodology is the use of interpretive structural modelling (ISM), as also used in the earlier paper by Srivastava and Sushil. In this paper Gupta et al. use ISM to understand strategically how the key critical success factors for Lean are related and in so doing highlight key factors for implementing Lean in the studied context. In addition they carry out a waste analysis which is a standard technique implemented within Lean.

In the IJPPM many contributors have focused on the private sector and many on the public sector. In our final paper Parker, Keller and Xu compare and contrast the two sectors and look at the connections between the two. In particular they concentrate on tools and measures associated with performance and productivity. They acknowledge the impact of the New Public Management paradigm in pushing the public sector to become more market oriented; but also recognise the distinctiveness of public sector organisations and that solutions from the private sector cannot simply be transferred. Parker and his colleagues also consider the voluntary sector and how it differs from the public sector.

Tom Burgess and John Heap