International Comparisons of Australia's Infrastructure Performance

International benchmarking has played a key role in the reform of Australia's infrastructure industries by promoting indirect or yardstick competition, in highlighting the need for further reform and building a consensus for implementing necessary changes. The international benchmarking of infrastructure performance by the Bureau of Industry Economics (BIE) between 1991 and 1996 did much to focus attention on the need for change. The BIE examined the performance of eight infrastructure industries relative to international best practice: electricity, rail freight, telecommunications, the waterfront, road freight, coastal shipping, aviation and gas supply. Performance comparisons concentrated on indicators of price, service quality, labour productivity and capital productivity. This paper reviews and summarises the performance comparisons the BIE undertook over the last three years of its infrastructure benchmarking program. The BIE international benchmarking program provides a useful role model for other countries wanting to seriously pursue reform of their infrastructure industries.     

The Attitudes of British National Health Service Managers and Clinicians Towards the Introduction of Benchmarking

This paper describes an empirical study, conducted in three acute hospitals, of the attitudes of central managers, medical managers and clinicians towards the adoption of benchmarking. Benchmarking was portrayed in The New NHS White Paper (1997) as an important means of improving efficiency over the next decade. The present paper examines the context of change and nature of benchmarking. Findings are presented in seven sections including: the understanding which respondents had of benchmarking; their willingness to be involved in benchmarking; the existence of strategies and policies for implementing benchmarking; the relevance of existing costing information; and the role of networks in facilitating benchmarking. The study concludes that the process of change adopted contradicted most of the factors associated with creating receptivity to change. Also, that the publication of the National Reference Costs seemed to have more relevance to resource planning at central National Health Service Management Executive level, than to effecting improvements at operational level in acute hospitals.     

电力企业同业对标管理的研究

同业对标是现代企业管理的重要手段,它要求公司各级要提高认识,加强同业对标工作的组织及领导,加强组织协调,加大工作力度,发挥专业部门的主导作用,强化管理改进,促进指标的优化提升。     

A FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYZING CHANGES IN STRATEGIC PERFORMANCE

In this paper we present a framework for analyzing changes in strategic performance. Traditional measures for comparing the strategic performance across firms or over time have been return on investment (ROI) and its component ratio, return on sales (ROS). We decompose the ROS ratio into four separate ratios that capture the impact of changes in a firm's productivity, price recovery, product mix and capacity utilization on its profitability. These ratios help to highlight the micro sources of strategic success or failure. They can be used to assess changes in the performance of a firm compared to itself over time, or to other firms in its industry group. This framework can also be used to evaluate changes in the dynamic performance of an industry as a whole. We illustrate the use of these ratios with a 4-year analysis of the performance of a large manufacturing company. We also demonstrate how the technique can be applied to an industry with an evaluation of the performance of U.S. telecommunications firms between 1975 and 1987, a period during which the industry experienced a progressive increase in competitive pressure.     

Energy benchmarking in support of low carbon hotels: Developments,challenges, and approaches in China

Achieving effective and objective energy benchmarking for hotels is integral in fostering the sustainable development of the lodging sector. In this work, we reveal the major and minor streams of hotel energy benchmarking and ascertain that the most popular approach in benchmarking is normalized energy use intensity (EUI) based on floor level. Previous efforts to establish EUI indicators using subsystem average, data envelopment analysis (DEA), and regression technique are also studied. We propose that hotel energy benchmarking based on floor area is useful from the top-down management perspective. However, on a practical perspective, energy benchmarking based on facilities should be the first priority for hotel management or owners. Compared with the general energy benchmarking in the building sector, we find that the hotel sector lags behind in the adoption of computer modeling for benchmarking.     

基于"标杆管理"的海南远景经济指标预测

在海南远期经济指标的预测过程中,时间跨度较大,经济社会发展的不确定因素很多,利用传统的数学模型不易把握其发展态势,难以预测。借鉴管理学上“标杆管理”的模式成功地对海南远景经济指标进行了分析预测,该思路同样适用于其他区域经济远景指标的预测。     

Development Opportunities for a Tourism Benchmarking Tool-The Case of Tyrol

Abstract

The aim of this study is to improve an already existing Tourism benchmarking tool designed and implemented by the Austrian Provincial Government of Tyrol in 1987 (Haemmerle and Lehar 1987, Berktold 1992). After a brief introduction which overviews latest benchmarking approaches within tourism (Morey and Dittman 1995, Kozak and Rimmington 1998, Siguaw and Enz 1999, Dubé et al. 1999, Ritchie and Crouch 2000) and emphasizing its strategic significance of continually monitoring and emulating standards of performance, the principal purpose of an already existing benchmarking tool, the Tyrolean Tourism Barometer, is described in form of a case study. Both, the data gathering process as well as the operational sequences leading to a variety of indicators are thoroughly discussed. The paper concludes by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of this secondary data based benchmarking tool. The final section of the paper critically assesses the neglect of relevant elements within the production process of tourism services. Here, the point will be made that it will not suffice to only describe structural shifts in tourism supply and demand in order to establish a reliable instrument for retrospectively evaluating tourism policy and strategically optimize future destination policies. Thus, the existing approach, initially based on price and capacity data only, is extended by linking it to both quality measures of customer satisfaction as well as resource allocation conditions (Weiermair and Fuchs 1999, Wöber 2000).     

基于标杆超越的绩效管理流程再造

标杆超越是企业管理变革实践的先进方法,它是适应我国当前社会的一个重要方法,在国内外企业管理中都有较好应用。本文首先分析了标杆超越内涵、特点及价值,然后例证了一个基于标杆超越的绩效管理的流程的实践,最后提出了实施标杆超越应注意的问题,希望能对相关企业有借鉴意义。     

基于SOA的烟草商业信息系统整合研究及应用

为了解决烟草行业中普遍存在的信息孤岛问题,充分发挥已有信息系统的作用,本文以烟草商业对标管理工作为切入点,采用SOA技术构建烟草商业对标系统。经实验表明,所提方案是切实、可行、可靠的,为烟草行业的信息系统集成提供了成功的案例,具有一定的现实意义。     

资源配置、R&D投入与标杆水平——来自中国制造业的实证检验

RD资源的投入是企业实现产业升级的重要保障,但关键是RD资源投入多少合适和各企业RD投入的标杆水平如何确定。文章作者将标杆管理运用于RD的资源配置领域,通过建模、评价、及测度分析,确立了最适合企业发展的RD投资的标杆水平,从而为企业在充分利用稀缺资源时,如何达到资源效用最大化,提供了一个学习的标杆。文章以上市公司制造类企业为例,首先构建了评价RD投资标杆水平的模型,进而通过结构方程模型对之进行了测度分析,找出了各行业RD资源投入的标杆水平,最后再进一步利用特征偏离法测算出各企业RD资源投入现状距离标杆水平的差距。