One of the most innovative approaches to encouraging good practice in this area is the use by an increasing number of institutions of specific methodologies drawn from the private sector to both enhance and measure performance. Two of the most interesting are summarised: the use of the Balanced Scorecard, and the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model.
The Balanced Scorecard is an increasingly widely used approach to measuring performance in both private and public sectors, and attempts to provide a 'balanced' perspective across four main elements: customer satisfaction; internal business processes; finance; and innovation, learning and growth. In each area institutionally specific key measures are defined which are critical to success, thus avoiding the danger of performance being measured just in financial terms.
For example: at Edinburgh University the balanced scorecard methodology has been used to provide its Court (governing body) and managers with a range of strategy based indicators on which to measure success. Introduced for the year 2002-2003, it provides a suite of indicators linked to the nine main strategic goals of the University. To take account of the culture of the University the four main elements in the scorecard have been reworded slightly from the original and are: financial perspective, organisational development perspectives, internal business perspective, and stakeholder perspective. University performance on the key indicators is recorded as is that of comparable universities, and the indicators were chosen after an extensive period of consultation. Time series data are assembled for previous years not initially covered by the scorecard.
The European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) is a self-evaluation tool designed to assist performance measurement and institutional management, and a number of institutions are using it in some way although most are still at a relatively experimental stage.
Liverpool John Moores University has pioneered the adoption of a 'Business Excellence Programme' based on the EFQM approach, and this has included the appointment of a Director of Business Excellence at the executive board level. With strong support from the Vice-Chancellor, a cross institutional team undertook a self-assessment of the University's position in terms of the 9 dimensions and 32 sub-dimensions of the EFQM model which was followed by two workshops involving the senior management group. From this an action plan was produced concentrating initially on issues of: strategy, process, people, and measurement. The programme was commended in the Lambert Report (December 2003).