Editorial

Citation

Radnor, Z. and Heap, J. (2007), "Editorial", International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Vol. 56 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijppm.2007.07956baa.001

Editorial

We take research seriously in this journal. Oh, that everyone was the same. We cannot resist quoting that the Migraine Association of Ireland recently suggested that migraines could be costing the Irish economy 240 million Euros a year in lost productivity. We have no idea whether this is true … but we doubt it. It is but the latest example of an organisation issuing a dramatic press release to make its own case and at the most generous interpretation stretching flimsy evidence to way past where it should have broken!

But, back to the serious stuff! In this issue, both academic papers consider the performance of banks – one in the Gulf and the other in Singapore. Both papers also use data envelopment analysis (DEA) as a means of investigating the efficiency of the banks. The paper by Ramanathan is suggested as being the first study on the performance of banks in the Middle East. It considers six countries in the Gulf Cooperation State and illustrates that in four countries there has been an improvement in productivity. The second paper by Sufian considers commercial banks in Singapore and finds that large banks have higher efficiency scores than either small or very large banks but smaller banks outperform the large banks on scale efficiencies.

For those of us coming to terms with the concept of DEA it can be described as a method used to estimate the efficiency of homogeneous organisational units (often called decision making units or DMUs) that use the same inputs to produce the same outputs. DEA takes the observed input and output values to form a production possibility space, against which the individual units are compared to determine their efficiencies. It is interesting to note that although DEA as a methodology was first considered in 1958 by MJ Farrell (1957) it was not until 1978 that Charnes et al. (1978) proposed a model to support the idea. Since then, as this journal has and is illustrating, the use of DEA has become more widespread and as editors we are seeing more and more applications and even variations of the original concept.

Although we do take research seriously, there is no doubt that we all often base decisions on statistically insignificant or anecdotal data. One of the co-editors recently had to cancel a trip. It was a trip where – to save money – the web was scoured to get the best possible prices for a flight, car hire and accommodation. You may not be surprised to hear that cancelling was much, much harder than making the initial booking. It involved long sessions of telephone tag and music-while-you-wait … (this is definitely the way to get to know the way to Amarillo!) and at premium charge rates. One organisation, however, was exemplary. It had an entry on its web site called “How to cancel” and one quick phone call later, it was done. Guess which company we will use in the future … and which ones we will not.

And again, though we take things seriously, there is room for comedy and humour in business – as illustrated by the Vitug/Kleiner paper in the “Application” section of this issue. Humour can sometimes be the best way of putting over a particular message – or of defusing a potentially tense situation. Or, as in the case of the little “observations; we put into these editorials, sometimes they are just ‘fun’” – and we all need some of that!

The paper by Manville looks at the BSC in SMEs in the NFP sector – a neglected sector in performance management terms.. This sentence is clear to “those in know”; others will have to read the paper just to find out what it is about.

And finally … those of us who write for (at least part of) a living tend to be reasonable at grammar and spelling (or at least know how to use available support tools!) but most of us have our “blackspots” of words we always mis-spell. Similarly most of us have routes we always forget, quiz questions we always get wrong. Does this extend into our working life. Do we continue to send inappropriate e-mails?, behave wrongly at meetings?, annoy our work colleagues? If so, why does no-one tell us. If not, why does the curse of the blackspot not extend into this area of our lives? I can feel a research project coming on.

Zoe Radnor, John Heap