scholarly journals Using numbers that do not count: how the latent functions of performance indicators explain their success

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirley Kempeneer ◽  
Wouter Van Dooren

Performance indicators have had to endure severe criticism. They are said to lack accuracy, encourage gaming and ultimately fail to improve performance. Yet, despite their well-documented weaknesses, performance indicators abound in governance. This article asks under which conditions performance indicators can improve performance outcomes, despite these proven weaknesses and dysfunctions. Our case study is the stress test of the European banking system, a high-profile performance indicator used for risk regulation. Based on interviews with risk managers in Belgian banks as well as staff at the European Central Bank, the European Banking Authority and the National Bank of Belgium, we find that the process of calculating the stress test improves performance outcomes in itself. It does so by fostering banks’ capacity to self-regulate, tying into Foucault’s notion of governmentality. As such, practitioners and academics should not only pay attention to how performance results can be used, but also examine how the process of calculating the performance indicator might be designed to improve performance outcomes latently.

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 800-807
Author(s):  
Shirley KEMPENEER

The financial crisis in 2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic today have made it clear that both financial and medical crises spread pervasively across borders. The financial crisis proved that the health of the entire European banking system stands and falls with the health of a single systemically important bank. As such, in the past decade, European Union (EU)-wide cooperation and regulation have been strengthened to ensure financial health across Europe. Today, the COVID-19 crisis reveals the de facto existence of a European healthcare system, where Member States’ medical health is interlinked and challenged. It too highlights the need for a more coordinated approach. This paper will draw lessons from European financial regulation and stress testing to make recommendations for EU-wide healthcare. The paper will show the latent benefits that a stress test might have on healthcare performance through mechanisms of governmentality. Moreover, it will pinpoint shortcomings in the financial stress test that could pose looming dangers for a European Health Union, such as a lack of de facto risk sharing. The paper concludes with pragmatic suggestions for a way forward in European healthcare regulation.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirley Kempeneer ◽  
Wouter Van Dooren

The stress test of the European Central Bank has become one of the primary regulatory tools for the European banking system. In order to make such a regulatory indicator, different national banks need to be made comparable according to a common metric. Despite a substantive literature, little empirical work has been done on the social and political processes through which these indicators are made. We use Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to study how commensuration is negotiated. We find that despite a preference for commensuration, regulators allow ‘incommensurable’ categories to exist because of their unrecognised regulatory benefits.


2010 ◽  
pp. 61-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Solntsev ◽  
A. Pestova ◽  
M. Mamonov

The article analyzes factors that affect growth of the share of non-performing loans in the loan portfolio of Russian banks and proposes approaches for this share forecasting on the basis of dynamics of macroeconomic indicators. It also deals with methodological issues of remote stress-test of lending agencies. Using the results of conducted stress-test of Russian banks the authors assess their perspective capital needs in 2010 and estimate the share of government assistance in capital injections. Furthermore, the authors define the scale of vulnerable banks groups in the Russian banking sector.


2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 161
Author(s):  
C. R. Che Hassan ◽  
M. J. Pitt ◽  
A. J. Wilday

The development of the audit method has included the identification of possible performance indicators at each level of the sociotechnical pyramid for a range of areas of work in which accidents have been shown to occur most frequently. The measurementof performance indicators is part of a feedback loop which causes safety improvements. Integration of performance indicators into the audit system has been tested at three operating chemical industries in Terengganu and Selangor in Malaysia. A summary of the weaknesses of the similar elements identified in the three audited plants is presented. Analysis on the approach used enables the identification of deficiencies in safety management aspects. Keywords: Accidents, audit, deficiencies, performance indicators, safety management, and sociotechnical pyramid.


Author(s):  
Viral V. Acharya ◽  
Tim Eisert ◽  
Christian Eufinger ◽  
Christian Hirsch

This chapter compares the recapitalizations of the Japanese banking sector in the 1990s with those in the ongoing European debt crisis. The analysis points to four main policy implications. First, recapitalizing banks by insuring or purchasing troubled assets alone is not likely to solve the problem of banks’ weak capitalization, as this measure is not able to adjust the extent of the recapitalization to the banks’ specific needs. Second, the amount of the recapitalization should be based on actual capital shortages and not risk-weighted assets to avoid banks decreasing their loan supply. Third, banks should face restrictions regarding the amount of dividends they are allowed to pay out. Finally, banks must be induced to clean up their balance sheets and reduce the amount of bad (non-performing) loans to rebuild confidence in the European banking system.


2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (2/3) ◽  
pp. 262-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alona Mykhaylenko ◽  
Ágnes Motika ◽  
Brian Vejrum Waehrens ◽  
Dmitrij Slepniov

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of factors that affect offshoring performance results. To do so, this paper focuses on the access to location-specific advantages, rather than solely on the properties of the offshoring company, its strategy or environment. Assuming that different levels of synergy may exist between particular offshoring strategic decisions (choosing offshore outsourcing or captive offshoring and the type of function) and different offshoring advantages, this work advocates that the actual fact of realization of certain offshoring advantages (getting or not getting access to them) is a more reliable predictor of offshoring success. Design/methodology/approach – A set of hypotheses derived from the extant literature is tested on the data from a quantitative survey of 1,143 Scandinavian firms. Findings – The paper demonstrates that different governance modes and types of offshored function indeed provide different levels of access to different types of location-specific offshoring advantages. This difference may help to explain the ambiguity of offshoring initiatives performance results. Research limitations/implications – Limitations of the work include using only the offshoring strategy elements and only their limited variety as factors potentially influencing access to offshoring advantages. Also, the findings are limited to Scandinavian companies. Originality/value – The paper introduces a new concept of access, which can help to more reliably predict performance outcomes of offshoring initiatives. Recommendations are also provided to practitioners dealing with offshoring initiatives.


Author(s):  
Mufti Imam Pekih ◽  
Adelina Sembiring ◽  
Sugeng Santoso

<p><span lang="PT-BR">PT Jakarta International Container Terminal (JICT) is the largest container port in Indonesia. Currently, JICT capacity is 2.5 million TEUs (Twenty-foot Equivalent Units) per year, it continues to strive to improve international services and is supported by adequate container loading and unloading equipment. The requirement to establish common standards in different types of container port equipment and identify performance indicators to assess the performance of container handling equipment has increased. Although the Quay Container Crane (QCC) operating system may be different at each container terminal, there are similarities in its main movements, namely: Main Hoist, Trolley, Gantry, and Boom. By knowing the clock metric for each movement, it is possible to determine the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) that has been adopted and assess the performance of the Quay Container Crane (QCC). The results of the study identified that the value of MMBF (Mean Move Between Failures) decreased due to the accumulation of long-lasting heavy load operations, while the number of maintenance activities for machine parts and working hours continued to increase. Key Performance Indicator (KPI) as a management tool can guide QCC inspections and the results can provide useful insights for improving the performance of equipment and container loading and unloading operations in the future.</span></p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 251 ◽  
pp. 04001
Author(s):  
Rafał Dominik Krawczyk ◽  
Flavio Pisani ◽  
Tommaso Colombo ◽  
Markus Frank ◽  
Niko Neufeld

This paper evaluates the real-time distribution of data over Ethernet for the upgraded LHCb data acquisition cluster at CERN. The system commissioning ends in 2021 and its total estimated input throughput is 32 Terabits per second. After the events are assembled, they must be distributed for further data selection to the filtering farm of the online trigger. High-throughput and very low overhead transmissions will be an essential feature of such a system. In this work RoCE (Remote Direct Memory Access over Converged Ethernet) high-throughput Ethernet protocol and Ethernet flow control algorithms have been used to implement lossless event distribution. To generate LHCb-like traffic, a custom benchmark has been implemented. It was used to stress-test the selected Ethernet networks and to check resilience to uneven workload distribution. Performance tests were made with selected evaluation clusters. 100 Gb/s and 25 Gb/s links were used. Performance results and overall evaluation of this Ethernet-based approach are discussed.


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