Editorial

Citation

Burgess, T. and Heap, J. (2012), "Editorial", International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Vol. 61 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijppm.2012.07961faa.001

Editorial

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Volume 61, Issue 6.

We live in a world increasingly dependent on knowledge and so the importance of knowledge-based work is recognised more and more. Therefore the question of why some knowledge workers can perform at substantially higher levels than others, is an important one to pursue. In our first paper White, James, Burke, and Allen look at what makes star performers in one area of knowledge work, academic research in business schools. The authors use data collected from 236 faculty in US business schools and apply regression techniques to link various individual characteristics to their research productivity. They correlated high performance with various factors including valuing the research task and working in departments that value research, having more time and support for the task, and occupying higher status positions. One particular variable that marks out high performers is their superior time management skills; so presumably if you want to improve your performance you need to make time for the time management course!

One of the key principles of organisational life is that it is all about people, or as managers might say, “the human resource”. So an effective management information system that covers the human resource would seem to be a good thing for an organisation to have and something that will contribute to effective management of performance. Kassim, Ramayah and Kurnia in the second paper investigate such human-resource information systems (HRISs). They examine the use of HRISs from the vantage point of their nature as innovations that are adopted by HR personnel and they consider the impact that HRISs have on the performance of HR professionals. Their study relies on data from a sample of 70 Malaysian HR personnel that are subjected to partial least squares for the analysis. Given the continuing debate around the impact of ICT on productivity, it is pleasing to see that a study conclusion is that HR professionals feel empowered by the technology and that it enables them to perform at a higher level.

In the third paper, Mahmoud and Yusif investigate the relationships between two features of non-profit organisations and their performance. The two features are market orientation and learning orientation. The former construct, originally developed for for-profit organisations, has to be modified in this context to cover all stakeholders and not just customers. The authors use regression techniques to analyse data from a sample of 118 non-profit organisations in Ghana. They find that marketing orientation works through learning orientation to deliver both economic and non-economic performance. In other words if you focus on developing a responsive organisation that satisfies your stakeholders then you can’t go far wrong!

Aurélio de Oliveira, Oliveira Dalla Valentina and Possamai provide the fourth paper. Their study combines a number of aspects that are more and more seen as relevant to modern business. Project organisation is progressively more relied on, agility is increasingly desired, and leadership rather than management seen as a critical ingredient for high performance. The context for the study is management of R&D projects. The authors adopt an unusual, but increasingly popular approach – that of Bayesian networks, and apply this to data from 32 senior researchers involved in the R&D projects. They find that a main influence on project performance is task overlapping; i.e. parallel rather than sequential working.

In the fifth paper Ferreira, Shamsuzzoha, Toscana and Cunha report on work carried out under funding from the European Commission. The authors focus on the problem of performance measurement and management within a collaborating network of businesses. Given the increasing influence of networks in business, the need for practical ways of implementing performance management in such contexts is growing. They elaborate a conceptual approach before moving on to describe, via a case study, software to handle performance management in this collaborative context.

Six Sigma is one of the flourishing topics in business performance improvement, as witnessed by its regular appearance in our journal. Its relative novelty means that there is still a lot to say about Six Sigma. In our final contribution in this issue, Antony presents an application of the popular SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) framework to Six Sigma. The views of a group of leading practitioners and academics provide the content of the SWOT analysis; so the material should form a useful resource for anyone contemplating the usefulness of six sigma, e.g. prior to adoption.

Tom Burgess and John Heap