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Preface The functions of business divide into several areas and the general focus of this book is on one of the most important although least understood of these—DISTRIBUTION. The particular focus is on reviewing current practice in distribution costing and on attempting to push the frontiers back a little by suggesting some new approaches to overcome previously defined shortcomings.

Proposes a method to assess the relative value of organizational human resource (HR) based on total performance. The total performance of the man‐machine resource base of an organization includes its profitability together with how it affects the interests of consumers, the national economy and society (i.e. other than profitability performance). The total performance thus achieved, judged in relation to the plant base used, reflects the productivity of HR. Such a productivity level achieved by the HR viewed in relation to the man‐related cost reflects the “external value” of HR. The impact of certain uncontrollable external factors (which may not be attributable to HR) has been assessed on the organizational total performance to reflect the controllable dimension of HR value, i.e. the “internal value” of organizational HR. The proposed method has been applied in an integrated iron and steel plant to study its HR value over a ten‐year period.

In recognising the need to research the concept of customer satisfaction the study aims to develop a strategic approach to measuring a customer′s satisfaction with a particular enterprise. The study is an attempt to (1) develop an overall concept of customer satisfaction; (2) provide a detailed relationship structure for implementation within a company; and (3) identify potential research areas. A basic premiss of the study is that the focus should be on maximising total product value to the customer; and then, second, that customer satisfaction of external customers is inter‐dependent on the satisfaction of internal customers. The framework of the research centres on a proposed model which integrates all aspects so as to maximise the potential of the organisation and all its subsystems to create and sustain satisfied customers. The approach begins with a conceptualisation phase in which the concept of customer satisfaction is explored. Attributes are then classified into services and this is then extended to integrate the internal customer into a total service model; applying gap‐analysis to this model. Enterprise satisfaction provides the basis for extending the total service model; positioning is applied to the customer satisfaction strategy; and operationalising of this strategy is proposed through an implementation model.

Only a small amount of research is available as yet on the performance of property developments. This article seeks to analyse the performance of property developments in institutional property investors' portfolios over four European countries – France, Germany, Sweden, and the UK – based on property level data submitted to the IPD property databank. The study also aims to consider total returns of standing investments as a benchmark for property developments.

Performance data over the period 1998 to 2002 are analysed by means of a multi‐factor analysis of variance where the factors are the country, property use type, year of completion, duration and capital value groups of property developments. As property developments usually carry higher risks, one would expect total returns of developments to be higher than for standing investments. By comparing weighted total returns of property developments with those of standing investments, support was found for this assumption in most cases.

Only in Germany did property developments perform even worse than the standing investments. Country and capital value were found to be the key performance drivers for property developments in the four countries. Interestingly, property use type does not yield a significant impact on performance.

As a first contribution, the findings of the study are supposed to be valuable for European institutional property investors in their asset allocation decision processes.

The aim of this paper is to use a new approach of performance evaluation, grey relation analysis (GRA), which is a concept borrowed from the study of industry and is increasingly applied to commerce. GRA is used to evaluate the relative performance of three of Australia's major banks The result of the study indicates that although the sample size is small and the distribution of data is unknown, GRA can still be successfully used in evaluating bank performance. In addition, this paper compares the GRA results with the financial statement analysis and shows that the same result can be obtained.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of varying motivation induced by financial incentives and common uncertainty caused by time pressure on audit judgment performance.

The experimental method is used to examine how financial incentives and time pressure affect audit performance, based on predictions by both economic and behavioral theories. The relative performance contract and the profit sharing contract are two incentive schemes considered. To achieve the incentive effect on subjects when conducting the experiment, all subjects were compensated with real cash rewards, according to their incentive contracts as randomly assigned.

As predicted, major results show that both incentive contract and time pressure affect audit judgment performance. The audit performance is generally better under the relative performance contract than under the profit sharing contract. Additionally, it is demonstrated that an increase in the level of time pressure significantly improves recall, recognition, and total efficiency under both types of incentive contracts, but impairs recall and total performance, particularly under the relative performance contract. Moreover, the reduction of recall and total performance under the relative performance contract is significantly greater than under the profit sharing contract. Nevertheless, in this case, the relative performance contract still outperforms the profit sharing contract.

The findings suggest the relative superiority of the relative performance contract in comparison with the profit sharing contract in improving auditors' judgment performance for structured tasks.

The relative performance contract would motivate junior auditors to exert more effort to increase their performance in the work environment of increased time pressure. The audit firms may incorporate relative performance evaluations into incentive schemes, to improve junior auditors' performance for structured tasks.

The paper is of value to audit firms in the design of performance‐contingent incentive contracts.

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) and to present an overview of TPM implementation practices adopted by the manufacturing organizations. It also seeks to highlight appropriate enablers and success factors for eliminating barriers in successful TPM implementation.

The paper systematically categorizes the published literature and then analyzes and reviews it methodically.

The paper reveals the important issues in Total Productive Maintenance ranging from maintenance techniques, framework of TPM, overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), TPM implementation practices, barriers and success factors in TPM implementation, etc. The contributions of strategic TPM programmes towards improving manufacturing competencies of the organizations have also been highlighted here.

The literature on classification of Total Productive Maintenance has so far been very limited. The paper reviews a large number of papers in this field and presents the overview of various TPM implementation practices demonstrated by manufacturing organizations globally. It also highlights the approaches suggested by various researchers and practitioners and critically evaluates the reasons behind failure of TPM programmes in the organizations. Further, the enablers and success factors for TPM implementation have also been highlighted for ensuring smooth and effective TPM implementation in the organizations.

The paper contains a comprehensive listing of publications on the field in question and their classification according to various attributes. It will be useful to researchers, maintenance professionals and others concerned with maintenance to understand the significance of TPM.

The recent economic and political focus on rising income inequality and the extent of government intervention into pay policies has renewed the interest in executive compensation. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of changing regulatory landscapes on executive pay and its components.

This study examines a recent 23-year period divided into three distinct intervals separated by two major regulatory changes, the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) and the Dodd–Frank Act. Bonus, long-term and total compensation are separately modeled as a function of each regulatory change while controlling for firm size, performance and year. The model is estimated using panel data with firm fixed effects. An industry analysis is also conducted to examine sector variations.

Total compensation increased 29 percent following SOX and 21 percent following Dodd–Frank, above what can be explained by size, firm performance and time. Total compensation increased following both SOX and Dodd–Frank in all industries except for the financial services industry where total compensation was unchanged. Results are robust to using smaller windows around each regulation.

This study does not seek to determine whether executive compensation is at an optimal level at any point in time. Instead, this study focuses only on the change in executive compensation after two specific regulations.

The debate over the extent to which the government should intervene with executive compensation has become a frequent part of political and non-political discourse. This paper provides evidence that over the long-term, regulation does not curtail executive compensation. An important exception is that total compensation was restrained for financial services firms following the Dodd–Frank Act.

Over the past few years there has been a significant upsurge of interest in building performance and its appraisal. As the expectations and standards of property users increase, appraisers of buildings have had to develop improved evaluation methods. Building surveyors, as key technical appraisal specialists in construction, have a contribution to make in this growing field. A great deal of the extant research on building performance has been at the “micro‐level” where either individual building elements or aspects of a building′s internal environment have been critically evaluated. Such work can highlight component failures and cryptoclimate problems, but it does little to enlarge our understanding of how buildings perform overall. Discusses some of the current issues assessing the total performance of buildings. Refines the model labelled property efficiency appraisal (PEA) for evaluating the total performance of existing buildings. Considers the key factors and influences for a “macro‐level” assessment of the total performance of existing buildings and points the way ahead.

Corporate real estate (CRE) service delivery is experiencing a paradigm shift. A short period ago, the focus was on speed to delivery ‐ how quickly the CRE department could identify, procure and prepare space for the expectant workforce. In today’s economic environment, CRE departments are focusing on ways to become more effective and efficient in their use of resources. The development and use of a simplified scorecard, based on Kaplan & Norton’s Balanced Scorecard, can assist in refocusing activities. In this paper, the authors propose a Simplified Scorecard framework and development process which serves to focus CRE efforts on a minimal number of factors, aligned with corporate strategy, thereby assisting the CRE department in achieving greater corporate success. Moreover, the proposed scorecard offers a manageable number of performance metrics for measuring and monitoring portfolio efficiency and effectiveness. Such a scorecard is needed to form a common understanding of key corporate success factors, manage CRE resources, prioritise CRE activities and compare a company’s real estate performance against that of its peers.