PERSPECTIVES
Interviews The following interviews are alphabetically arranged with regards to the interviewee’s surname. Interviewee name: Sujay Nair Title: Lecturer Main subjects: Enterprise Performance Management Strategic Management Accounting Organization: The University of Melbourne Country: Australia Continent: Australia 1. What does the term Performance Management mean to you? It is a very broad term. For me, I would say, Performance Management is comprised of a collection of principles, tools and techniques to help an organization achieve its objectives.
is doing his job and achieving his or her performance objectives, it does not translate into the department achieving its goals and objectives because they are not consistent, and so on and so forth. The other source of leakage, in addition to the misaligned objectives, is the lack of leadership capabilities. So although a person is really doing well in his job, the leadership at the department and/or organization level is not able to translate a good performance at the individual level to good performance at the departmental and /or organizational level.
shareholders, but also asking the question on how it is performing in the eyes of the employees, local communities, global communities and so on and so forth. So I think this is one important trend. Another trend would be the recognition of the behavioral elements and human biases in Performance Management. So although we have certain tools or techniques that in theory should work in a certain way, and because human beings are not always rational and are subject to biases, the actual results could be different. These behavioral aspects which affect the way people act in the real world may cause one to reconsider some of the Performance Management principles and/or tools that are used.
5. What aspects of Performance Management should be explored more through research? Going back to what I mentioned about the first trend in 2012, we need more research on what is the right way to measure performance in a broader sense. 2. What drives interest in Performance So instead of just measuring shareholders’ Management? returns, where we have a lot of theory The reason why there is a strong interest and experience in doing, how does one in Performance Management is because of measure ‘returns’ to the employees, local its strong links to the organization’s ability to communities, global communities? achieve its objectives. Organizations use the Another interesting topic that principles, tools and techniques of Performance Management to The reason why there is a strong interest would potentially benefit from more research is whether the ensure that the purpose of their in Performance Management is because of principles, tools and techniques existence is fulfilled. its strong links to the organization’s ability that we have in Performance Management need to be 3. What are your thoughts to achieve its objectives. Organizations modified for the new generation on the relationship between Performance Management at use the principles, tools and techniques of that has recently joined the workforce, Generation Y. The organizational, departmental Performance Management to ensure that hypothesis is that Generation and individual level? In an ideal environment, a the purpose of their existence is fulfilled. Y has very different needs and wants compared to Generation high performing individual should 4. What are the 2012 key trends in X and also to baby boomers. Therefore lead to a high performing department. And a high performing department should Performance Management from the there could be a need to modify the lead to a high performing organization. perspective of your knowledge and principles, tools and techniques we have been using to manage performance. There should be a very strong link. In experience in this field? One of the trends is the broadening of reality, it sometimes doesn’t happen in 6. Please provide some examples that way because of leakages. I think the performance considerations beyond the most common leakage happens because shareholders’ perspective. So when one of organizations which you would the objectives of each of these components looks at how an organization is performing, recommend for study due to their are not aligned. So even though a person one is not just confining oneself to the approach to Performance Management 16