Design and implementation of a performance measurement system for a research organization

Many manufacturing and service organizations have used measures and measurement systems to determine their performance. There are also many different performance measurement systems presented in the literature and some of them are commonly used, for example the balanced scorecard. However, there is little experience of performance measurement of research organizations. Because of certain characteristics of a research organization, many new challenges arise related to performance measurement. This paper is based on a single case study which was carried out between spring 2002 and spring 2003. In the study a performance measurement system was designed and implemented for a case organization. The main research approach used is the action-oriented approach and the researcher acted as a facilitator of the measurement system construction process. In this study, the methods used are focus group interviews and observation. In this paper, the aim was to find out how to design and implement a performance measurement system in a research organization. As a result of the study, some challenges related to designing and implementing a performance measurement system in one research organization were presented. However, the results could also be utilized in other research organizations.