Purpose: With the growing importance of performance measurement and management, this exploratory study intends to examine the practices of maintenance managers with regards to maintenance measures, as used in their organizations. In this process, the study attempts to uncover the relevant maintenance performance dimensions from the perspectives of the surveyed managers. In addition, the mediating effect of information availability on the main performance measures utilization is studied. Design/methodology/approach: The research at hand is survey-based. It utilizes the responses of a sample of ninety-five (95) experienced maintenance managers to identify the most relevant maintenance performance measures. Factor analysis is then utilized to uncover the important dimensions of performance, as seen by the respondents. Additionally, using the Partial Least Squares method, several models were studied. Findings: The findings of this exploratory research appear to suggest that maintenance managers are beginning to broaden their perspective with regard to performance management. While machine and plant-related performance measures are still emphasized, maintenance managers are slowly moving toward a wider organizational orientation. While the manufacturing organizations are becoming more and more customer-oriented open systems, the maintenance function of these organizations is still, for the most part, operating under the semi-open system orientation. Overall, it appears that an emerging maintenance strategy is slowly taking shape. Research limitations/implications: For the most part, performance measures and measurement related to maintenance have not received enough attention from researchers. Therefore, the literature dealing with the different facets of performance in maintenance has not been forthcoming. The study attempts to fill this apparent gap in the literature. This is important, as maintenance managers are being asked to contribute to the achievement of the competitive strategies of their organizations. Therefore, they must quickly learn how to view maintenance from a coherent strategic organizational perspective. Such a perspective should help in integrating the maintenance, resources, capabilities, and technical know-how in order to serve the strategic goal of their organization. The research at hand is limited to a sample from Portugal. Therefore, the results and conclusions must be interpreted accordingly. Practical implications: As maintenance managers struggle to move from a machine-orientation to a more organizational-wide strategic orientation, they are often left with many questions and few answers. This study attempts to bring this problem to the spotlight so that it can receive more systematic empirical and practical research. In this context, the role of maintenance managers in the process of organizational strategy formulation should be examined. Originality/value: The study presented in this article has practical, as well as theoretical contributions. It deals with an area of performance measurement, which so far has been relatively ignored. It uses a system orientation (closed vs open), in addition to the strategic orientation (single vs multi-faceted strategy) in order to shed some light on the need to have consistency between the nature of the system and its strategic objective.

The general practice in performance and production efficiency measurement has been to ignore additional products of most transformation processes that can be classified as "undesirable outputs" — which are a subset of the output set. Without the inclusion of these factors, the efficiency evaluation becomes a purely technical measure of the system alone, and does not account for the interaction of the system with the surrounding environment and the impact of policy decisions on the system. In addition, there are also technological dependencies arising due to the relationships between the desirable and the undesirable outputs. One of the analytical tools normally used in efficiency evaluation is Data Envelopment Analysis, DEA. In the course of addressing these problems, a decision-maker encounters multiple and contradictory objectives with respect to the output set. This motivates the exploration of new arenas of measurement of efficiency to facilitate policy decisions and address technological relationships. This research presents five modifications of the traditional DEA technique to give a more realistic and comprehensive score of production efficiency considering both, desirable and undesirable outputs. The models address the following problems: (i) technological dependency between desirable and undesirable outputs; (ii) decision-maker's preferences over inputs, desirable outputs and undesirable output performance and finally (iii) conflicting production objectives through a formulation that uses Goal Programming in conjunction with DEA, a concept known as GoDEA. / Master of Science

Managing the paradox of exploitation and exploration symbolises the simultaneous pursuit devoting enough resources to exploitation to ensure short-term profits and, at the same time, enough resources to exploration to ensure future organisational viability. Previous research advocates that sustained organisational performance and success highly depends on the interaction of exploitation and exploration or in other words, the balancing act between change and continuity. To strategically balance these contradictory requirements is a challenging task for most organisations since exploitation and exploration require fundamentally different organisational structures, processes, strategies and capabilities. Organisations that possess the ability to balance these contradictory requirements are referred to as ambidextrous organisations, what is evident is however that different ambidextrous strategies bring several distinctive challenges that organisations explicitly must deal with. Past literature advocates that management constitute an important part in creating organisational ambidexterity, but has nevertheless due to differentiations in organisational contexts resulted in ambiguous guidance in how to practically solve the tensions between exploitation and exploration.  Scania the initiator of this thesis project, one of the world´s leading manufacturers within trucks and buses for heavy transport applications is sensing uncertainty in what undoubtedly used to be a relatively stable environment. Continues improvements has been a fundamental strategy in R&D for decades but in the face of a potentially disruptive technological shift, Scania senses urgency to leverage the innovation capability they possess, to reclaim the exploration space in order to act and seize upon these uncertainties. The purpose of this thesis is to explore how management can support and sustain the exploration space in a mature R&D department.  This study builds upon a qualitative case study limited to a specific R&D department, Truck Chassis Development. To draw parallels and provide a deepened understanding of how the specific context of the organisation affect section managers at Truck Chassis Development in supporting and enabling exploration, interview data from several departments at R&D and sales & marketing is analysed.  Results from this research show that there is an overall pressure for exploitation in R&D in general, and that section management encounter several challenges in supporting and sustaining the exploration space. An overall pressure for delivery precision crowds out time for exploration and present performance measurements are found to further add to this challenge since they are, to a large extent designed to measure and follow-up the relatively more certain and superior benefits from exploitation, implying that they tend to induce and support exploitative activities. The research findings provide managerial implications in terms of directing attention towards exploration through measurements of exploration. / Att balansera innovationsparadoxen syftar till den organisatoriska förmågan att tillägna tillräckliga resurser för exekvering för att säkerställa kortsiktig vinst, och samtidigt, tillägna tillräckliga resurser till utforskande för att säkra ett strategiskt framtida läge. Tidigare forskning visar att organisationers långsiktiga överlevnad är beroende av dessa avvägningar, att leverera produkter med högt kundvärde är viktigt för dagens affär men får inte göras på bekostnad av att utforska möjligheter som kan resultera i framtida innovationer. Att strategiskt balansera dessa  två perspektiv utgör en stor utmaning för alla organisationer eftersom att exekvering och utforskande aktiviteter kräver helt olika förutsättningar när det kommer till strukturer, processer och strategier. Företag som besitter förmågan att balansera dessa två helt olika perspektiv brukar refereras som tvehänta. Tvehänta organisationer har visat sig balansera dessa två perspektiv på olika sätt, vilka alla medför utmaningar, dock av olika slag. Tidigare forskning har betonat ledarskap och chefskap som viktiga faktorer i skapandet av tvehänta organisationer men har på grund av organisatoriska differentieringar och olikheter resulterat i vaga riktlinjer angående hur man praktiskt löser de utmaningar som uppstår mellan exekverande och utforskande aktiviteter.  Scania, initiativtagare till detta arbete är ett av världens ledande tillverkare inom lastbil och buss för tunga transporter. Scania känner osäkerhet i vad som brukade vara en således stabil bransch. Ständiga förbättringar har varit en betydelsefull strategi i decennier för forskning och utveckling, FoU, men inför ett eventuellt teknikskifte inser man att en betydligt större del av arbetet måste syfta till utforskande aktiviteter.  Syftet med detta examensarbete är att undersöka hur management kan möjliggöra och främja utforskande aktiviteter i en mogen FoU-avdelning. Den utförda forskningen grundar sig i en kvalitativ fallstudie som är avgränsad till en specifik FoU-avdelning, chassiutveckling för lastbil. För att få en djupare förståelse för ledarskap och det ledarskapsansvar som finns i att främja och stödja utforskande aktiviteter kräver vissa organisatoriska förutsättningar har ett flertal avdelningar inom FoU-organisationen samt sälj & marknad inkluderats i studien. Den utförda forskningen visar att chefer på den undersökta avdelningen möter av ett flertal utmaningar när de försöker möjliggöra och främja utforskande aktiviteter. Det grundar sig främst i ett högt focus på leveransprecision som  begränsar chefer i sin roll att stödja och främja utforskande aktiviteter, följden av detta resulterar i  begränsat med tid för utforskande eftersom dessa aktiviteter inte  prioriteras. Nuvarande prestationsmätning visar indikationer på att ytterligare bidra till dessa utmaningar eftersom de avser att mäta till den största grad, leveransprecision, kvalité och kostnad och där utforskande aktiviteter saknar prestationsmätning. Resultatet av denna studie bidrar med praktiska implikationer för den studerade avdelningen. Eftersom att uppmärksamhet är den mest begränsade resursen har mätvärden för utforskande aktiviteter föreslagits då mätning och styrning av utforskande aktiviteter kan bidra till att dessa aktiviteter uppmärksammas samtidigt som de kan utgöra ett stöd för sektionscheferna i deras roll att främja och stödja utforskande aktiviteter.

Prestationsmätning används inom organisationer för att bland annat utvärdera, förbättra, motivera och styra organisationer i önskad riktning. Med New Public Management reformer ökades fokuset på att styra och mäta resultat mer effektivt inom den offentliga sektorn. Det ledde till en högre arbetsintensitet och ökad stressnivå för medarbetarna. Den större delen av tidigare forskningen inom prestationsledning och prestationsmätning är baserat på normala förhållanden. En krissituation sätter däremot organisationer på prov och de behöver anpassa sig för att kunna hantera krisen. När organisationer sätts på prov och behöver strukturera om för att hantera en kris förändras även förutsättningarna för att mäta prestationer. För att undersöka hur prestationsmätning används i krissituationer har en kvalitativ forskningsmetod använts för att få en djupare förståelse för medarbetarnas upplevelser. Data är insamlad genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med tio medarbetare, som arbetar inom sjukvården och på sjukhus. Den insamlade empirin har analyserats med hjälp av ett konceptuellt analysverktyg som är uppdelad i tre teman: utvärdering, prestationsmätningens form och motivation. Studiens resultat styrker dels den tidigare forskning men bidrar även med nya insikter. Studien visade att prestationsmätning påverkas av krissituationer på grund av tidsbrist då de formella prestationsmätningsaktiviteterna i de flesta fall har behövts prioriteras bort. De informella aktiviteterna har å andra sidan fått mer utrymme och bidragit till en mer informell och möjliggörande styrning inom organisationer. Utvärderingen baseras främst på subjektiva värden, observationer och rykten vilket medarbetarna har blandande upplevelser om huruvida rättvis bedömning cheferna kan göra. Studien har även visat att medarbetarna motiveras av prestationsmätningen när den är kopplad till incitament som högre lön och individuella utvecklingsmål. Däremot finns det inte tillräckligt med resurser för att fokusera på sina mål. / Performance measurements or appraisals are used within organizations to, among other things, evaluate, improve, motivate, and steer organizations in the desired direction. New Public Management reforms initiated an emphasis on managing and measuring results more efficiently in the public sector. This caused a higher work intensity and increased employee stress levels. Most of the previous research in performance management and performance measurement are based on normal conditions. A crisis puts organizations to the test, and they need to adapt to be able to deal with the crisis. When organizations are put to the test and need to restructure to deal with a crisis, the conditions for measuring performance also change. To examine how performance measurements are used in a crisis, a qualitative research method has been used to gain a deeper understanding of employees' experiences. Data has been collected through semi-structured interviews with ten employees, who work in healthcare and hospitals. The collected empirical data has been analysed using a conceptual analysis tool that is divided into three themes: evaluation, the form of the performance measurement and motivation. The results of the study partly strengthen previous research but also contribute to new insights. The study showed that performance measurement is affected by crises, due to a lack of time, formal performance measurement activities have in most cases been prioritized away. The informal activities have on the other hand been given more space and contributed to more informal and enabling control within organizations. Evaluations are mainly based on subjective values, observations, and rumours, which the employees have mixed experiences about whether a manager can make a fair assessment. This research paper has also shown that employees are motivated by performance measurements when they are linked to incentives such as higher salaries and individual development goals, but on the other hand, there are not enough resources to focus on their goals.

Individuals’ personal improvement efforts are pervasive and the benefits associated with successful self-improvement are both tangible (e.g., healthier lifestyles, more intimate relationships) and intangible (e.g., personal accomplishment, enhanced well-being). As evidenced by research on work-family spillover, self-improvement also has important implications for organizations, as there is considerable crossover between work and non-work domains. The current study tested the effectiveness of Truly Accomplished, an intervention designed to help individuals develop personalized systems for measuring and improving behavior, and examined the extent to which the outcomes associated with such behavior change exhibit positive spillover effects into the workplace. Participants (N = 44) experienced large gains in effectiveness (d = 2.93). Effectiveness gain was predicted by conscientiousness (r = .40), core self-evaluations (r = .42), and psychological safety (r = .64). Learning goal orientation and performance goal orientation interacted with perceived goal difficulty to predict effectiveness gain. Overall effectiveness gain was negatively related to stress and positively related to future change efficacy, job-related efficacy, and satisfaction with the intervention. Job satisfaction and job efficacy increased following feedback, providing some evidence of spillover. Results have implications for individual behavior and attitude change, and its impact seems to extend into subjective well-being above and beyond actual behavior change. Evidence of spillover has implications for organizations, suggesting that TA may be used as a mechanism through which job-related outcomes can be improved.

Nonprofit programs deliver key social services to millions of people across the country everyday, however, little is known about the ethical practices of these programs. This research examines the relationship between a nonprofit program's ethical practices and the programs' measurable outcomes, such as changes in knowledge, attitudes, values, skills, behavior, condition, or status of the participant as a result of their involvement with nonprofit programs. An assumption of the study is that the achievement of the measurable outcomes found in a nonprofit program is directly related to the extent that ethical practices are utilized within that program. Ethical practices include role modeling, ethics development, ethics enforcement and review, stewardship, transparency, and empowerment. This study demonstrates that the ethical strategy Transparency influences the achievement of program performance outcomes. Through a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis, this study attempts to illustrate the impact of transparency as well as determine how it is incorporated in nonprofit programs based on interviews with nonprofit program managers/directors. Additionally, this study demonstrates that the capacity of a program's processes is negatively associated with the achievement of program performance outcomes. This finding suggests the need for a greater level of transparency in program planning and performance outcome measure development in order to ensure the program is mission driven and its performance outcomes are meeting the needs of the community it serves.

Lean has become a widespread concept within various industries. It originates from the production system at Toyota and focuses on maximizing customer value and eliminating waste. It has been adopted throughout industries as a consequence of stiffening competition and higher customer demands. From Toyota, the concept spread to other car manufacturers and then further to other manufacturing industries. In recent years, the Lean concept has spread to more intangible settings, initially to service functions within the manufacturing companies and later to pure service oriented industries such as healthcare, banking, and insurance. Most recently, the concept has been adopted in IT businesses as a mean to gain competitive advantage. A lot of research on the Lean concept has been concerned with issues such as implementation and the operational application of the concept. Even though the purpose of the concept is to increase the operational performance and to deliver high customer value, little emphasis has been put on research related to performance measurement in a Lean service setting. While some research regarding modern performance measurement frameworks exists, a weak link is identified between the two research areas (Lean and Performance measurement). This study has focused on the specific IT service setting at Company X and their Lean initiative. The purpose of this study is to complement Company X’s Lean initiative with recommendations related to an area currently not emphasized by Company X, measuring performance improvements due to their Lean efforts. Company X is especially interested in the linkage between operational improvements and the financial outcomes. This study employs a holistic view in order to gain a wide understanding of the organizational context and the business in general. It has been paramount for this study to understand the organizational setting, the theoretical concepts, and the interplay between them. As a mean of fulfilling the purpose, the case study methodology has been employed throughout this study. The research was initially defined by its objectives and delimitations. Interviews, observations, and a content analysis contributed to the overall organizational knowledge which was deemed crucial for the end result. The organizational knowledge together with the understanding of the theoretical concepts and the exploratory benchmark study has been the basis for the analysis and recommendations. The study has rendered in recommendations regarding how measurement activities should be designed and employed in Company X’s Lean setting. This study suggests that a limited focus should be put on general measuring activities in Tieto. More specifically, little focus should be put on attempting to determine a correlation or linkage between the operational improvements and financial outcomes. The study further suggests a separation of the organizational KPIs into steering (operational) KPIs and monitoring (financial) KPIs. This is suggested in order to have operations steer the organizational performance as well as cement the Lean concept within the organization. Overall, a focus should be put on measuring processes rather than financial data.

The operations efficiency, service quality and resources productivity, are the core aspects of the call centres competitive advantage in massive market competition. Thus, subjective evaluation is the leniency, perception and bias in performance evaluation which impact the efficiency of the operations and leads to frustrated customers. The study aims to determine the subjective performance evaluation in call centres to get a more objective measurement. It can be achieved by identifying factors affecting resources performance evaluation through the development of a conceptual model to reduce or eliminate the effect of subjective factors contained in the performance evaluation. The research approach is based on quantitative methodology through cross-sectional self-reports for 224 participants’ work in eight outsource call centres located in Egypt. The research aims to determine the subjective evaluation factors biases the true performance. It is followed by a machine learning practical application using neural networks for auto-detection the subjective context in the recorded calls to be considered through the evaluation process. The key findings of the study are nine subjective factors out of fifteen that have a direct influence on subjective performance evaluation. The actual performance is the performance evaluation after eliminating the subjective performance. Two different methods have concluded the actual performance. The first method excludes the subjective factors from the resulting evaluation to determine the actual performance. The second method is a prediction model defining subjectivity percent as a call centre baseline for future performance evaluation. Furthermore, the study highlights the potential subjective variables and the degree of influence for each variable. The theoretical contribution is determining the subjective factor and proposing the model to measure and predict the subjectivity in the call centre. The study recommended a restatement for the resource-based theory considering the subjective evaluation effect on performance evaluation. The practical application contribution is based on automating the detection and prediction of subjectivity using a machine learning approach through cascaded Convolutional Neural Networks, which achieved 75% accuracy in classifying the subjectivity for two study constructs: agents and customer behaviour.

In general companies continuously have to improve their operations to be able to survive in the global competition. They have to be better in utilizing their resources today compared to what they were yesterday. The production systems have changed during the 20th century and factories today do not look like they did hundred years ago. Focus has moved from mass production towards flexibility. The changes in production philosophy have not been followed by a corresponding change in different supporting functions. Research shows that many companies still use accounting methods that have not been developed since the 1930s. The purpose of this licentiate thesis is to provide perspectives on some aspects concerning the relationship between manufacturing operations management and management accounting. This will increase the knowledge and understanding of how management accounting information supports manufacturing decision making. This thesis reports findings from four studies designed to investigate the informational relationship between management accounting and operations management in companies. Results from this research shows that there are many factors to consider when choosing and designing an appropriate management accounting system. Contextual factors include market, manufacturing strategy, technology, and organization. This thesis also reports on the difficulties of making theoretically sound methods work in practice. This thesis contributes with some explanatory aspects on the practical problem and investigates some potential ways forward concerning manufacturing-related management accounting. / Generellt måste företag ständigt förbättra sin verksamhet för att kunna överleva i den globala konkurrensen. De måste bli bättre på att utnyttja sina resurser i dag jämfört med vad de var igår. Produktionssystemen har förändrats under 1900-talet och fabriker i dag ser inte ut som de gjorde för hundra år sedan. Fokus har flyttats från massproduktion till flexibilitet. Förändringarna i produktionsfilosofi har inte följts av en motsvarande förändring i olika stödfunktioner. Forskning visar att många företag fortfarande använder redovisningsmetoder som inte har utvecklats sedan 1930-talet. Syftet med denna licentiatavhandling är att ge perspektiv på vissa aspekter som rör förhållandet mellan produktionsstyrning och ekonomistyrning. Detta kommer att öka kunskapen och förståelsen för hur information ur internredovisning stöder beslutsfattandet inom tillverkning. Denna avhandling rapporterar resultat från fyra studier som syftar till att undersöka informationssambandet mellan produktionsstyrning och ekonomistyrning i företag. Resultat från denna forskning visar att det finns många faktorer att tänka på när man väljer och utformar en lämplig internredovisning. Kontextuella faktorer omfattar bland annat marknaden, produktionsstrategi, teknologi och organisation. Denna avhandling rapporterar också om svårigheterna att få teoretiskt sunda metoder att fungera i praktiken. Denna avhandling bidrar med några förklarande aspekter på det praktiska problemet och undersöker några potentiella vägar framåt för produktionsrelaterad internredovisning.

The corporate accelerator Ericsson ONE, at the multinational networking and telecommunications company Ericsson headquartered in Sweden, is subject to this master thesis research. Within the organization, there was a need for a new business performance measurement system for indicating the performance and success of Ericsson ONE. The objective of this research was to find suitable frameworks and methods that can be applied when developing a customized business performance measurement system for a corporate accelerator. The goal was then to identify relevant measurements and Key Performance Indicators for Ericsson ONE to use and to visualize that data to communicate it to the users. This has been a qualitative study with ten conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with representatives from different departments at Ericsson ONE. Additionally, interviews were also made with representatives from an external accelerator program. The study has been following a three-step method for assessing and developing a business performance measurement system in a structured way. It resulted in a mockup of a dashboard where data for the new business performance measurements both can be collected and visualized. To ensure all important areas and perspectives of the organization are covered, the strategy performance management tool Balanced Scorecard was applied. / Företagsacceleratorn Ericsson ONE i det multinationella nätverks- och telekommunikationsföretaget Ericsson med huvudkontor i Sverige är uppdragsgivaren för detta examensarbete. Inom organisationen fanns ett behov av ett mätsystem för att indikera hur Ericsson ONE utvecklas och för att se vilken framgång som sker. Syftet med denna uppsats var att hitta lämpliga ramar och metoder för att utveckla ett anpassat mätsystem till en företagsaccelerator. Målet var att för Ericsson ONE identifiera relevant mätbar data utifrån lämpliga ramverk samt att visualisera och kommunicera denna data för användarna. Denna kvalitativa studie har genomförts genom att representanter från olika delar av Ericsson ONE har intervjuats på ett semistrukturerat sätt. Även representanter från ytterligare ett acceleratorprogram har inkluderats. Projektet har följt en trestegsmetod för att utvärdera och utveckla ett mätsystem på ett strukturerat sätt. Detta resulterade i att en mockup för en dashboard har utvecklats där data och mätindikatorerna kan samlas ihop och visualiseras. För att säkerställa att alla viktiga områden och perspektiv i organisationen täcks, användes strategihanteringsverktyget Balanced Scorecard.