Traditional Performance Measures Research Articles

A novel approach for the structural comparison of origin-destination matrices: Levenshtein distance

Origin-Destination (OD) matrix is a tableau of travel demand distributed between different zonal pairs. Essentially, OD matrix provides two types of information: (a) the individual cell value represents travel demand between a specific OD pair; and (b) group of OD pairs provides insights into structural information in terms of distribution pattern of OD flows. Comparison of OD matrices should account both types of information. Limited studies in the past developed structural similarity measures, and most studies still depend on traditional measures for OD matrices comparison. Traditional performance measures are based on cell by cell comparison, and often neglect OD matrix structural information within their formulations.We propose a methodology that adopts the fundamentals of Levenshtein distance, traditionally used to compare sequences of strings, and extends it to quantify the structural comparison of OD matrices. The novel performance measure is named as normalised Levenshtein distance for OD matrices (NLOD). The results of sensitivity analysis support NLOD to be a robust statistical measure for holistic comparison of OD matrices. The study demonstrates the practicality of the approach with a case study application on real Bluetooth based OD matrices from the Brisbane City Council (BCC) region, Australia.

How to Measure Performance in a Purposeful Company? Analysing the Status Quo.

This paper examines the relevance of the British Academy Principles for Purposeful Business in the area of corporate measurement and performance. Because measurement and performance are critical for effective and sustainable management, the success of putting purpose into practice hinges on the ability to create metrics beyond solely financial standards and benchmarks. Drawing on expert interviews, case studies and document analysis, this paper analyses the current ecosystem of “non-financial” measures, discussing which frameworks and methodologies organisations can choose from and how these may differ in utility. It further explores whether and how metrics can be practically integrated with the traditional financial performance measurement, such as profits and capital investments. This inquiry provides an analysis of the remaining gap between existing non-financial measurement and accounting efforts and their full integration into organizations. The paper concludes with a discussion of three areas in which non-financial measurement is believed to be most impactful: investment practice, management decision making & incentivization, and corporate governance.

Capital Maintenance Evolution using Outputs from Accounting System

Decision making based on information provided by an enterprise accounting information system, is essential for sustainable development and enterprises growth. Besides widely used prediction models for an assessment of the financial distress, there is also a useful indicator of a capital maintenance evolution, that provides a deeper view to the enterprise growth or decline compared to traditional performance measures. The aim of the contribution is to develop a model for assessment of a capital maintenance evolution using available accounting outputs. Our constructed model and coefficient for a capital maintenance evolution CMEOPNN has been developed using the multi-layer (triple) artificial neural network with a feedforward signal transmission by a backpropagation method and an activation function is a sigmoid function. For construction our model we used 663 Slovak enterprises sample out of 5 most frequented industry sectors with a unified structure of the provided information in the financial statements for 2014-2017.

Performance and Behavioural Responses of Group Housed Dairy Calves to Two Different Weaning Methods.

The weaning of dairy calves is a significant stressor which can impact on calf performance and welfare. However, many traditional methods of assessing the effects of stressors can be invasive and impractical for farmers. This study aimed to use a combination of non-invasive monitoring technologies alongside traditional measures of calf performance to examine the impact of two contrasting weaning methods commonly used on dairy farms in the United Kingdom. Ninety group-housed Holstein Friesian calves were allocated to one of two weaning methods: (i) gradual weaning (GW) with volume of milk replacer (MR) stepping down from 36 days of age and complete withdrawal of MR at 57 days of age and (ii) abrupt weaning (AW) with consistent daily volume of milk replacer and complete withdrawal of MR at 50 days of age. Feeding regimes were such that calves from both treatments were offered the same total amount of milk powder. Gradually weaned calves displayed increased solid feed intake at an earlier age when compared with AW calves. Feed conversion efficiency (FCE) was reduced in gradually weaned calves between days 36 and 49. However, there was no difference in live weight (LWT) or average daily gain (ADG) throughout this period. Abrupt weaning at 50 days of age resulted in decreased ADG and FCE between days 50 and 56. However, there were no treatment differences in ADG between days 57 and 62. Live weight tended to be increased by 2.2 kg in GW calves when compared with AW calves at the end of experiment on day 63. Frequency of unrewarded visits to the milk feeder throughout the pre-wean period was consistently increased in GW calves. Daily lying time was reduced in AW compared with GW calves in the days following abrupt weaning (days 50-55). However, these differences did not persist between days 57 and 62. Heart rate variability (HRV) tended to be decreased in GW compared with AW calves in the period following complete withdrawal of milk replacer. Findings from the current study suggest that calves offered the same total amount of milk powder can be weaned either gradually from 36 days of age or abruptly at 50 days of age without significant impact to live weight at 63 days of age. However, both behavioural and physiological data collected using the methods described could suggest that gradual weaning of calves from 36 days of age results in an increase in underlying frustration. This study highlights the potential of using a combination of non-invasive monitoring technologies in assessing calf response to common management practices.

The “Superior Performance” of Covered Calls on the S&P 500: Rethinking an Anomaly

This study shows that previous findings of the superior performance of covered calls on the S&P 500 are spurious because they ignore or dismiss skewness. While academics have previously identified this problem, the financial industry has largely ignored it. The authors show how the problem manifests in that traditional performance measures used in other studies show superior performance even with correctly priced options. They present two new estimates of covered call alphas—one that embeds a benchmark and the other that subtracts the benchmark—and find little basis for these prior claims. The authors also identify a bias in previous studies in which the chosen holding period disguises the effect of skewness. Their results, which are supported in both monthly and daily data, are consistent with intuition that holding the index and selling these widely traded options cannot generate alpha, as has been highly promoted in several practitioner articles. TOPICS:Options, performance measurement, exchange-traded funds and applications Key Findings • The documented abnormal performance of covered call writing is largely driven by disregard of skewness. • There are simple measures that can adjust the alpha of an option strategy for skewness. • The positioning of the holding period during the expiration month can disguise the problem.

Understanding Australian Academic Authors in the Humanities and Social Sciences Their Publishing Experiences, Values, and Perspectives

Publishers of academic books in Australia have evolved in response to the crisis in scholarly publishing by adapting to the opportunities afforded by digital technologies for faster, cheaper, and more dynamic publishing approaches. Academic authors are at the core of the scholarly publishing landscape, so publishers need to understand their motives and needs. This paper examines data from a survey of academic authors in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) in Australia. Our aim for the survey was to understand the publishing experiences, behaviours, and perceptions of these authors. We discovered their expectations for publishers are high. They want fast turnaround, high-quality editing and production values, and cheaper books, which run up against three principal constraints for all scholarly publishers: quality, time, and cost. The prestige and reputation of a publisher are critical, and authors are primarily interested in traditional success measures of academic performance. Societal impact or engagement with research end-users was seen as less important. The findings of this project highlight a number of contradictions and tensions within the scholarly publishing landscape, and they have tangible implications for practices in HSS for authors and publishers, as well as for grant funders and university administrators who adopt policies and assign criteria for research evaluation.

Factors affecting performance at the Iraqi Construction Projects, Ministry of Construction, and Housing and Municipalities and Public Works of Iraq as a case study

Iraqi construction projects suffer from complex issues and several problems. It is rarely to find construction project in Iraq implemented with the schedule cost, schedule time and required quality due to the poor management and absence of adequate performance measurements. Traditional performance measurements such as cost, time and quality are not acceptable in the recent complex working environment. The aim of this research is to find factors affecting performance of Iraqi construction projects and ranking them according to the perspective of three construction project parties (owners, consultants, contractors). Literature review about performance was executed and interviews with a number of experts in the field of Iraqi construction environment were held. Consequently, a questionnaire was designed, consists of 69 factors affecting performance of Iraqi construction projects. These factors categorise into nine items. Field survey was carried out to rank these factors from the owner, consultant and contractor perspectives using relative importance index (RII). The total numbers of distributed questionnaires are 125 forms, representing 35 for owners, 33 for consultants and 57 for contractors. The survey findings specify that performance factors related to contractor, consultant and resources are ranked in the first, second and third position with overall RII equal to 83.7, 82.9 and 79.9, respectively.

Benchmarking of secondary schools based on Students’ results in higher education

The performance of secondary schools is usually assessed based on students’ results on national exams at the end of secondary education. This research uses data on academic achievements by first-year university students to benchmark secondary schools on their ability to lead students to success in higher education. The analysis is conducted using data of University of Porto and Catholic University of Porto, Portugal, for a three-year period, corresponding to more than 10.000 students from 65 degrees, for which the school of origin is known. A number of variables representing students’ success in Higher education were constructed for each school in our sample and aggregated through a Benefit of the Doubt indicator. Results suggest that the schools’ ranking based on schools’ ability to prepare students for university success is quite different from the ranking based on results on national exams. Given these findings, we propose complementing schools’ performance assessments (traditionally based on national exam results or indicators of value added) with indicators that account for the preparation of students for success in future challenges, which is indisputably a key objective of secondary education. We propose a composite indicator for the analysis of these complementary aims as well, and results show that frontier units indeed exhibit trade offs between traditional measures of performance and our new measure of performance.

BALANCED SCORECARD UNTUK MENILAI KINERJA PERUSAHAAN (BARAYA TRAVEL BANDUNG)

Uncertainty in an increasingly competitive business environment, especially in the raising and emergence of several new companies in travel transportation services, should encourage a company to be able to have better performance to compete. Companies are faced with various threats and opportunities that emerge in the business environment, thus exposed to the uniformity of the company’s performance measurement tools as an instrument of the company’s performance evaluation. Measurement of company performance applied by Baraya Travel Bandung still use traditional performance measurement, incomprehensive and not optimal yet. Baraya Travel Bandung needs a performance measurement tool that can provide an overview of the overall achievement of the company’s business. The design of performance measurement tool that became the purpose of this research is Balanced Scorecard. The design of performance measuring tools using the Balanced Scorecard begins with translating the company’s vision, mission and strategic objectives that are linked into four perspectives in the Balanced Scorecard.

Changes in Financial Performance of Traditional Intermediatries for Financial Innovation

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the impact of digital bank deposit, asset and loan growth on selected traditional bank performance measures. In order to estimate whether a causal relationship between digital bank measures and traditional bank performance exists, Granger causality method is selected as the main empirical model. In addition, to determine the direction and strength of said relationship, OLS regressions are performed. Research results lead to the conclusion that digital bank deposit and loan growth have a causal relationship to traditional bank performance ratios. Deposit growth has a negative impact on traditional bank performance ratios and loan growth shows both positive and negative impact on different ratios. This research demonstrates some of the challenges that traditional banks are facing in the age of innovation.

Replication of ecologically relevant hydrological indicators following a modified covariance approach to hydrological model parameterization

Abstract. Hydrological models can be used to assess the impact of hydrologic alteration on the river ecosystem. However, there are considerable limitations and uncertainties associated with the replication of ecologically relevant hydrological indicators. Vogel and Sankarasubramanian's 2003 (Water Resources Research) covariance approach to model evaluation and parameterization represents a shift away from algorithmic model calibration with traditional performance measures (objective functions). Using the covariance structures of the observed input and simulated output time series, it is possible to assess whether the selected hydrological model is able to capture the relevant underlying processes. From this plausible parameter space, the region of parameter space which best captures (replicates) the characteristics of a hydrological indicator may be identified. In this study, a modified covariance approach is applied to five hydrologically diverse case study catchments with a view to replicating a suite of ecologically relevant hydrological indicators identified through catchment-specific hydroecological models. The identification of the plausible parameter space (here n≈20) is based on the statistical importance of these indicators. Evaluation is with respect to performance and consistency across each catchment, parameter set, and the 40 ecologically relevant hydrological indicators considered. Timing and rate of change indicators are the best and worst replicated respectively. Relative to previous studies, an overall improvement in consistency is observed. This study represents an important advancement towards the robust application of hydrological models for ecological flow studies.

Efficacy of Balanced Scorecard on Performance of Banks in Nigeria

This study examines the efficacy of balance scorecard (BSC) on the performance of banks in Nigeria as one of the most topical issues in the banking sector. The study was motivated by the imperfections of traditional performance measurement system which is inadequate as it is limited to financial analysis and does not provide for an integrated analysis of performance that captures the non-financial variables, such as customer, learning and growth and internal business process. The study was based on expost facto research design and made use of historical data of five selected banks spanning a period of eleven years (2007-2017). It was hypothesized that customer internal business process, learning and growth and financial perspectives have no significant effect on the performance of banks in Nigeria. The result indicates that customer perspective and internal business process perspective have significant effect on performance of banks in Nigeria, while financial perspective and learning and growth perspective have no significant effect on banks performance in Nigeria. It was recommended that banks in Nigeria should adopt the BSC approach to measure and manage their performance in view of its capacity to provide a comprehensive information on bank performance evaluation. It was further suggested that banks should be more innovative on customer and internal business process aspect of their operations in order to maximize performance. It is also stressed that banks should accord learning and growth components of their operations a significant attention. Keywords: Balanced Scorecard, Bank Performance and Measurement , Nigeria DOI : 10.7176/EJBM/11-23-05 Publication date : August 31 st 2019

Sustainable Aquaculture Futures

Sustainable Aquaculture Futures

The effects of business model regulation on the value relevance of traditional performance measures. Some evidence from UK companies

The first case in the world of a mandatory requirement to disclose business model (BM) in the annual report is represented by Companies Act 2013 issued in the UK. The BM offers a simplified representation of a company's key resources and of how these are combined to create value. For this reason, a systematic communication of BM should affect the way a company's book value and its capability to generate earnings are perceived. The purpose of this work is to investigate the impact of mandatory BM disclosure on the value relevance of traditional financial measures. Focusing on a sample of UK listed companies over a six-year period, Ohlson model is utilized to assess the value relevance of book value and net income and their interactions with a dummy variable that accounts for the introduction of mandatory disclosure of BM. In line with previous studies on non-financial disclosure regulations, results show that the introduction of the mandatory requirement to disclose BM has a negative moderating effect on book value of equity and a positive moderating effect on net income. As this is the first study to investigate the effects of a mandatory BM disclosure regime, it could be of interest for both academics and standard-setters.

Meeting the Challenge of the "Know-Do" Gap Comment on "CIHR Health System Impact Fellows: Reflections on ‘Driving Change’ Within the Health System"

Bridging the ‘know-do’ gap is not new but considerably greater attention is being focused on the issue as governments and research funders seek to demonstrate value for money and impact on policy and practice. Initiatives like the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Health System Impact (HSI) Fellowship are therefore both timely and welcome. However, they confront major obstacles which, unless addressed, will result in such schemes remaining the exception and having limited impact. Context is everything and as long as universities and research funders privilege peer-reviewed journal papers and traditional measures of academic performance and success, novel schemes seeking to break down barriers between researchers and end users are likely to have limited appeal. Indeed, for some academics they risk being career limiting. The onus should be on universities to welcome greater diversity and nurture and value a range of academic researchers with different skills matched to the needs of applied health system research. One size does not fit all and adopting a horses for courses approach would go a long way to solving the conundrum facing higher education institutions. At the same time, researchers need to show greater humility and acknowledge that scientific evidence is only one factor shaping policy and practice. To help overcome a risk of ideology and opinion triumphing over evidence, attention should be devoted to encouraging citizens to get actively involved in research. Research funders also need to give higher priority to how policy can be made to stick if the ‘know-do’ gap is to be closed.

Understanding the Downstream Healthcare Supply Chain: Unpacking Regulatory and Industry Characteristics

Hospital leaders face unprecedented pressure to improve traditional supply chain performance measures such as cost, quality, and customer experience. As such, healthcare executives are increasingly turning to the operations and SCM field to provide thought leadership and establish best practices around coordinating information, material, and financial flows in healthcare delivery. Unfortunately, our learnings from traditional manufacturing, and to some extent other service supply chains, do not always easily port to the downstream healthcare delivery supply chain due to regulatory issues and distinctive characteristics present in this network. Grounded in Institutional Theory, this study conceptualizes the downstream healthcare delivery supply chain, highlights important regulatory pressures that influence this supply chain, and examines the effects of government regulation and the unique characteristics of this network on coordination. In doing so, this conceptual study brings to bear important contextual considerations and motivates novel research areas where the SCM field can make substantial contributions.

Use of a Portable Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) System to Examine Team Experience During Crisis Event Management in Clinical Simulations.

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the utilization of a portable functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) system, the fNIRS PioneerTM, to examine team experience in high-fidelity simulation-based crisis event management (CEM) training for anesthesiologists in operating rooms.Background: Effective evaluation of team performance and experience in CEM simulations is essential for healthcare training and research. Neurophysiological measures with wearable devices can provide useful indicators of team experience to compliment traditional self-report, observer ratings, and behavioral performance measures. fNIRS measured brain blood oxygenation levels and neural synchrony can be used as indicators of workload and team engagement, which is vital for optimal team performance.Methods: Thirty-three anesthesiologists, who were attending CEM training in two-person teams, participated in this study. The participants varied in their expertise level and the simulation scenarios varied in difficulty level. The oxygenated and de-oxygenated hemoglobin (HbO and HbR) levels in the participants’ prefrontal cortex were derived from data recorded by a portable one-channel fNIRS system worn by all participants throughout CEM training. Team neural synchrony was measured by HbO/HbR wavelet transformation coherence (WTC). Observer-rated workload and self-reported workload and mood were also collected.Results: At the individual level, the pattern of HbR level corresponded to changes of workload for the individuals in different roles during different phases of a scenario; but this was not the case for HbO level. Thus, HbR level may be a better indicator for individual workload in the studied setting. However, HbR level was insensitive to differences in scenario difficulty and did not correlate with observer-rated or self-reported workload. At the team level, high levels of HbO and HbR WTC were observed during active teamwork. Furthermore, HbO WTC was sensitive to levels of scenario difficulty.Conclusion: This study showed that it was feasible to use a portable fNIRS system to study workload and team engagement in high-fidelity clinical simulations. However, more work is needed to establish the sensitivity, reliability, and validity of fNIRS measures as indicators of team experience.

Understanding the Downstream Healthcare Supply Chain: Unpacking Regulatory and Industry Characteristics

Hospital leaders face unprecedented pressure to improve traditional supply chain performance measures such as cost, quality, and customer experience. As such, healthcare executives are increasingly turning to the operations and SCM field to provide thought leadership and establish best practices around coordinating information, material and financial flows in healthcare delivery. Unfortunately, our learnings from traditional manufacturing, and to some extent other service supply chains, do not always easily port to the downstream healthcare delivery supply chain due to regulatory issues and distinctive characteristics present in this network. Grounded in Institutional Theory, this study conceptualizes the downstream healthcare delivery supply chain, highlights important regulatory pressures that influence this supply chain, and examines the effects of government regulation and the unique characteristics of this network on coordination. In doing so, this conceptual study brings to bear important contextual considerations, and motivates novel research areas where the SCM field can make substantial contributions.

Relationship among Market Value Added, Cash Value Added, and Corporate Governance: A Case of Taiwan during 2011–2012

Abstract Traditional accounting-based performance measurement systems often fail to account for changes in firms’ economic substances. Scholars have argued that market value added and cash value added methods are better value-based performance measurement systems that accurately reflect economic substance. This article examines the relationship among market value added, cash value added, and corporate governance for Taiwanese-listed firms. The results show cash value added to have a positive relationship to the market value added. The corporate governance variables have a positive or negative moderation effect on the relationship between cash value added and market value added systems. The moderation effect of the corporate governance variables on the market value added differs from cash value added.

The management of participatory cultural initiatives: learning from the discourse on intellectual capital

Based on previous research that highlights some gaps in the study of the new phenomena of Participatory Cultural Initiatives (PCIs), this paper addresses the need to understand how the relevance of those initiatives is perceived, tentatively measured and communicated to strategic stakeholders. With this, we want to investigate a possible contribution of the discourse on Intellectual Capital (IC) and Intangible Assets for the cultural sector in general and PCIs in detail. The IC perspective is adopted as a boundary object to analyse the key actors’ behaviours concerning PCIs, following a performative approach. In doing so, this field research applies a case study method of analysis by investigating two PCIs in Italy: Big City Life, a street art district in Tor Marancia (Rome) and the project of Matera as European Capital of Culture 2019. Data have been gathered through both primary (interviews) and secondary (official documents, social media, websites and press releases) sources of evidence. The analysis is mainly developed at a micro (single organisation) and meso (district/city) level. Given the originality of the topic whose research is still at an infancy stage and without a well-grounded theory, we seek to gain significant insights into this new issue by applying an exploratory approach. Through the IC lens, it is possible to gain a better understanding of how the PCIs’ impact is assessed and communicated to its stakeholders. Evidence shows that narratives and visualisations play a crucial role by supporting comprehension of the PCIs’ key aspects and their interwoven relations. A condition for narratives and visualisations to be accepted as legitimation tools is the development of a trust relationship among stakeholders. As a result, the impact of PCIs has dimensions and interwoven aspects which are not amenable for traditional performance measures. In summary, it is possible to state that PCIs trigger a focus on talking and showing to understand, instead of a focus on measuring to understand. The paper discusses how the understanding and management of PCIs can improve with lessons learnt from the discourse on IC and with reference to Habermas’ theory of communicative action. Primarily, we focus on the use of narrative and visual representations by key actors to communicate with strategic stakeholders to gain trust and legitimation.