Performance measurement and management at a Swedish manufacturing company

Abstract

Today, performance measurement and performance management practices permeate all types of industries and are frequently recommended to enhance organizational performance. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate how performance measurement and performance management can be assessed within the departments of an organization, so that the organization can understand where efforts need to be made to facilitate implementation of desired practices and effectively use its performance measurement system to evaluate the performance of the organization. A small manufacturing company was the subject of the thesis. Using the framework of interplay between performance measurement, performance management, employee engagement and performance by Smith and Bititci (2017), four departments of the company were assessed in their levels of maturity in performance measurement - also named technical control - and performance management - also named social control - respectively. This was done by interviewing and surveying employees at the company, collecting data relating to the criteria proposed by Smith and Bititci (2017) in technical and social control. By developing empirically derived maturity matrices for technical and social control practices within the company, the respective maturity levels within the individual departments were assessed. Overall, the product department shows the highest maturity in both technical and social control. Managerial implications include addressing the lack of employees’ connection to measures and targets as well addressing the lack of allotted time for feedback and performance reviews. The thesis contributes to existing theory by providing a tangible way to assess technical and social control between organizational units, able to be used both by managers and in future research alike.