It is important to have performance measures to evaluate managers as they contro

Question

It is important to have performance measures to evaluate managers as they control resources and invest in assets for the company. Describe how you could use different variances (actual to standard) to evaluate performance. Additionally, there are nonfinancial performance measures that can be used. Are there any that you think would be more or less important to a manufacturing company or a service company? Can you provide an example of a personal spending variance that you have experienced?

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Explanation / Answer

Improvement in individual, group, or organizational performance cannot occur unless there is some way of getting performance feedback. Feedback is having the outcomes of work communicated to the employee, work group, or company. For an individual employee, performance measures create a link between their own behavior and the organization's goals. For the organization or its work unit's performance measurement is the link between decisions and organizational goals. It has been said that before you can improve something, you have to be able to measure it, which implies that what you want to improve can somehow be quantified. Additionally, it has also been said that improvement in performance can result just from measuring it. Whether or not this is true, measurement is the first step in improvement. But while measuring is the process of quantification, its effect is to stimulate positive action. Managers should be aware that almost all measures have negative consequences if they are used incorrectly or in the wrong situation. Managers have to study the environmental conditions and analyze these potential negative consequences before adopting performance measures. TYPES OF PERFORMANCE MEASURES Performance measures can be grouped into two basic types: those that relate to results (outputs or outcomes such as competitiveness or financial performance) and those that focus on the determinants of the results (inputs such as quality, flexibility, resource utilization, and innovation). This suggests that performance measurement frameworks can be built around the concepts of results and determinants. Measures of performance of a business usually embrace five fundamental, but interlinking areas: Money, usually measured as profit Output/input relationships or productivity Customer emphasis such as quality Innovation and adaptation to change Human resources Within the operations area, standard individual performance measures could be productivity measures, quality measures, inventory measures, lead-time measures, preventive maintenance, performance to schedule, and utilization. Specific measures could include: Cost of quality: measured as budgeted versus actual. Variances: measured as standard absorbed cost versus actual expenses. Period expenses: measured as budgeted versus actual expenses. Safety: measured on some common scale such as number of hours without an accident. Profit contribution: measured in dollars or some common scale. Inventory turnover: measured as actual versus budgeted turnover. While financial measures of performance are often used to gauge organizational performance, some firms have experienced negative consequences from relying solely on these measures. Traditional financial measures are better at measuring the consequences of yesterday's actions than at projecting tomorrow's performance. Therefore, it is better that managers not rely on one set of measures to provide a clear performance target. Many firms still rely on measures of cost and efficiency, when at times such indicators as time, quality, and service would be more appropriate measures. To be effective, performance yardsticks should continuously evolve in order to properly assess performance and focus resources on continuous improvement and motivating personnel. In order to incorporate various types of performance measures some firm's develop performance measurement frameworks. These frameworks appear in the literature and vary from Kaplan and Norton's balanced scorecard to Fitzgerald's framework of results and determinants. Kaplan and Norton's balanced scorecard approach operates from the perspective that more than financial data is needed to measure performance and that nonfinancial data should be included to adequately assess performance. They suggest that any performance measurement framework should allow managers to ask the following questions: How do we look to our shareholders? (financial perspective) What must we excel at? (internal business perspective) How do our customers see us? (customer perspective) How can we continue to improve and create value? (innovation and learning perspective) However, the balanced scorecard is flawed as it does not allow for one of the most important questions of all:

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