Beyond performance measurement: contribution measurement
Dr Farhad Shafti has recently presented a paper on this in the Performance Management Association (PMA) Conference in 2014 at Aarhus University. You can read more about this on the Performance Magazine website.
Farhad’s entire research study was based on the idea that an organisation is not an isolated entity and its impact on the society should also be taken into consideration. For this purpose, he presented the idea of contribution measurement with the use of an imaginary scenario.
The researcher proposed a mobile phone company, whose balanced scorecard objectives were compared with different social issues. The purpose was discovering a cause-effect relationship with the final goal being the acknowledgement of how an organisation’s performance affects society.
For all of the four balanced scorecard perspectives, Farhad added the social outcomes the mobile phone company could have on the context it operates in. Some examples of social outcomes are:
- Family conflict
- Unsatisfying non-work life
- Stress reduction
The main learning point of Farhad’s research study can be comprised in understanding that taking into consideration only the business outcomes of an organisation is a reductionist approach, and “measurement” should be regarded beyond numerical facts.