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This article discusses current productivity improvement issues facing organisations in the UK and elsewhere. A brief overview of the UK resource utilisation position in central and local government, industry and commerce is provided. The international perspective is then outlined using examples of successful productivity organisations, productivity campaigns and company productivity improvement programmes taking place outside the UK. The article refocuses on the UK by reporting the findings from a productivity study of 28 private and public sector organisations. In conclusion it is suggested that operations managers and directors, especially in the UK, need to think about productivity improvement as a strategic as well as an operational issue.

This study aims to identify means to overcome some of the current problems in public service productivity measurement. The objective is to develop a new method for measuring productivity in large public organizations.

The research is carried out as a constructive case study in the City of Helsinki, Finland. Interviews are used in order to identify practical requirements for measurement. The measurement data from around 200 units is used in testing the method.

The new method applies an approach proposed in the literature. It aggregates measurement information from component measures used at the operative level. Based on test calculations and evaluation it is argued that the new method is managerially more relevant than a conventional method.

This study tested the method only to a limited extent. It is necessary to gain more understanding by applying the method in different organizations, and by using longer time periods.

Current productivity measures of public services have been criticized for providing information that lacks managerial relevance. The method described in this study aims to improve relevance in two ways. It enables the gathering of more detailed measurement information from the operative levels of large organizations. In addition, it facilitates the use of different measurement methods in different service providing departments and units.

Many of the existing studies examine productivity measurement at the macro‐level. This study presents a measurement method that is a step forward in developing more sophisticated measurement systems in public organizations. The study also describes and highlights the role of component productivity measurement at the operative level.

Recent New Zealand reports have identified the nursing workforce for its potential to make a significant contribution to increased productivity in health services. The purpose of this paper is to review critically the recent and current labour approaches to improve nursing productivity in New Zealand, in a context of international research and experience.

An examination of government documents regarding productivity, and a review of New Zealand and international literature and research on nursing productivity and its measurement form the basis of the paper.

It is found that productivity improvement strategies are influenced by theories of labour economics and scientific management that conceptualise a nurse as a labour unit and a cost to the organisation. Nursing productivity rose significantly with the health reforms of the 1990s that reduced nursing input costs but impacts on patient safety and nurses were negative. Current approaches to increasing nursing productivity, including the “productive ward” and reconfiguration of nursing teams, also draw on manufacturing innovations. Emerging thinking considers productivity in the context of the work environment and changing professional roles, and proposes reconceptualising the nurse as an intellectual asset to knowledge‐intensive health organisations.

Strategies that take a systems approach to nursing productivity, that view nursing as a capital asset, that focus on the interface between nurse and working environment and measure patient and nurse outcomes are advocated.

The paper shows that reframing nursing productivity brings into focus management strategies to raise productivity while protecting nursing and patient outcomes.

Productivity is a multidimensional and context-dependent concept. Therefore, many different definitions and consequently, many different approaches to productivity measurement (PM) exist in the literature. As a result, the understanding of productivity and the appropriate use of PM approaches are at a low level. The literature provides some overviews, but these overviews consider only a few selected individual aspects. Therefore, the overviews do not allow a comprehensive comparison and evaluation of existing approaches. This paper aims to give an overview of existing approaches to PM and to classify them according to elaborated criteria based on the main characteristics of productivity.

Literature review for existing approaches to PM using the following keywords: productivity, PM, productivity measure, labour productivity and labor productivity.

A total of 38 approaches are identified and listed between 1955 and 2020. The main result is a systematic overview and classification of existing approaches to PM.

Researchers can use the overview to determine the development over time, the current state of research in the field of PM and identify research gaps. The classification can also be used to classify new approaches.

Companies can use the classification as a guide to identifying appropriate approaches to measuring productivity in corporate practice.

This paper enables a comprehensive comparison and evaluation of existing approaches to PM. Also, the understanding of the multidimensional character of the productivity concept is enhanced.

The introduction of efficiency improvements and enterprise bargaining into local authorities has been severely hampered by a failure to agree on a method of measuring service productivity. This paper develops an outcomes measure of productivity which, it argues, meets both externally imposed cost efficiency requirements and clients’ needs for service effectiveness in terms of quality and equity in delivery. Applications of this measure to library and statutory planning services are provided.

Work crew productivity and the application of limited resources are necessary elements in construction duration delay analysis. This study thus proposes a method to analyze construction delays and resource reallocation based on work crew productivity and resource constraints. The study also presents an economic feasibility analysis that maximizes economic effect by reducing construction duration, the cost of resource reallocation, delay liquidated damages (DLDs) and incentives for reducing contractual duration.

The proposed method involved three steps. First, work crew characteristics such as productivity, unit price and workload helped analyze delay information, including delay duration, reducible duration and daily reduced cost. Next, a goal programming method assessed resource reallocation based on the priority (as determined by decision-makers) of each constraint condition, such as the available number of workers, cost, goal workload and statutory working hours. Lastly, the level of reallocation was analyzed based on the results of the economic feasibility analysis and decision-makers’ delay attitudes.

A case study was performed to test the proposed method's applicability. Its involved sensitivity analysis indicated proposing to decision-makers a scenario based on the prioritization of economic feasibility. The proposed method's applicability proved high for decision-makers, as they can determine whether to reduce construction duration per the proposed data.

The proposed method's main contribution is the reallocation of resources to reduce construction duration based on work crew productivity and the prioritization of limited resources. The proposed method can analyze the differences in productivity between the plan and actual progress, as well as calculate the necessary number of workers. Decision-makers can then reduce the appropriate level of contractual duration based on their own delay attitude, constraint condition prioritization and results from daily economic feasibility analyses.

The transition to the information age is shifting the decision‐making authority structure in organizations from political systems and subjective appraisals to management systems and objective personnel evaluations. The critical need to adopt the management system and objective evaluation procedures is based on the truism that timely, relevant, accurate feedback is a primary motivator of people.

This chapter introduces four research methods that are not covered in the previous chapters. They are (1) non-parametric statistics, (2) interpretive structural modeling, (3) analytic hierarchy process, and (4) data envelopment analysis. The methods are discussed with examples. The discussion, however, is introductory; so we urge the reader to go through the pertinent references for details.

This essay explores certain aspects of single product industry basic systems of the type Sraffa develops in Part I of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. It focusses on triangular trade as the simplest expression of the more general n-commodity case. Two elements of the framework are explored: (i) the relation of exchange between all commodities, conceived as the configuration of exchange which is applicable to the subsistence and surplus models, and (ii) the value/price expressions of labour time, applicable to the surplus model only, which posits the productivity of, remuneration to and extraction from living labour added to the system. This analysis complements and extends the Marxian reading of Sraffa’s notions of surplus and deficit industries first explored in Carter (2014b). The methodology of ‘given quantities’ in expositing the relations developed is adopted in this essay as it corresponds to the same method employed by Sraffa. This allows readers to easily move from the present essay to Sraffa’s book and importantly his archival notes which are now for all interested parties available as colour digital images on the Wren Library website.

ORGANIZATIONS operating in a city which earned the phrase ‘Shipshape and Bristol fashion’ have a formidable reputation to maintain. So much is expected of them. One at least need have no fears on those grounds if a first visit to its Annual Conference is typical of previous ones. It is the Department of Work Study and Staff Training of the Engineering Employers' West of England Association.