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"The book's interplay of conceptual and empirical thinking is one of its strengths. Data to illustrate the results come from case studies conducted with 13 individual organizations and 6 multiorganizational units, all of them in the United Kingdom, and all using one or another performance-measurement system. Each of the middle five chapters of the book reflects on some specific element of this agenda, and these chapters will be particularly interesting to practicing managers. Each one explores a different top-level issue in performance measurement with specific research questions and methods for data collection and analysis, drawing data from several main data sources. This book can be treated as a foundation for future research in effectiveness studies, and is also a rich source of good counsel to nonprofit managers. Paton has provided managers with much information on the utility and practical application of measurement systems, in a range of nonprofit service areas. Managers who need to "sell" Performance measurement inside their organizations will find this helpful. It is elegantly written and well structured, and though the setting for the case studies is British rather than American, it is entirely relevant to American nonprofit managers. In the scholar and practitioner libraries, it should be complemented with comparable tools for measuring program-level effectiveness and community impact. But overall, Managing and Measuring Social Enterprises is an ideal addition to the organizational effectiveness literature." (Roland J. Kushner Association for Research on NOnprofit Organization and Voluntary Action )
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`Its emphasis on performance measurement affords rare insights into some innovative techniques. Moreover, institutional and other theories are deployed to explore the reasons for innovation.... The book should be a prized resource for postgraduate students who seek a deeper understanding of social enterprise measurement and management practices. It covers extremely and topical issues, while the case studies offer a perspective on the complexities of real social enterprises' - Prometheus
`Recent years have seen the voluntary and social enterprise sectors embark on a tentative love affair with performance measurement. We should, it seems, be measuring, monitoring and reporting our performance for a variety of reasons - accountability, continuous improvement and self-motivation, to name a few. But has anyone stopped to consider the realities if implementing the range of tools on the market? Author Rob Paton does just this' - Voluntary Sector
Managing and Measuring Social Enterprises examines the question of what happens when performance improvement techniques originating in the private sector are applied to public and nonprofit organizations.
Managing and Measuring Social Enterprises looks critically at a range of performance measurements and improvement methods, including:
· Outcome measurement
· Using financial ratios for performance comparison
· Social audit
· Process benchmarking
· Externally accredited standards (like `Investors in People' and ISO 9000)
· Diagnostic models and other tools from the quality movements
· `Balanced scorecards'
Rob Paton offers a measured critique of the naïve realism and rhetorical excesses of the performance management movement but also shows why many of its critics are unduly pessimistic.
Through a combination of theory and research, the book provides practical guidance to the problem of performance management outside of the private sector.
This is an essential text for those interested in public and social enterprises, particularly MBA and Masters students in public administration/public management and non-profit management. (20060608)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is an excellent book. It is clearly written, well structured and up-to-date in its coverage. I especially liked the definition of ‘social enterprise’, which can be a tricky concept: Paton simply says “an organisation where people have to be business-like but people are not in it for the money”. This definition is essentially accurate, it is easy to apply and at the same time it is quite provocative – it challenges the reader to decide whether or not to agree that ‘people have to be business-like’ in such organisations as charities, voluntary organisations, community groups, etc. The rest of the book makes out a good case for why being ‘business-like’ is always important – but never enough in itself.
The book fills a large gap in the literature – the performance measurement of non-profit and voluntary organisations is a major issue in many parts of the world, especially where these organisations receive significant funding from the government sector and have to give an account for what they achieve with those funds. However, most of the previous books on this topic have either been ‘how-to-do-it’ books with little reference to the academic literature or else rather laborious conceptual books with little reference to practice.
The book is in three parts. The first three chapters set the scene, locating the central issues of the book in the context of general public policy developments and the literature on performance measurement in organisations. The next four chapters present original research on eight different methods of performance measurement and/or performance improvement in social enterprises. The final two chapters draw the discussion together, highlighting the implications for managers and policy makers. The sequence of chapters is as follows:
- The Challenge of Social Performance
- Performance Management as Government Policy
- Taking Measures – Lessons from the Literature
- The Performance of Measurement
- ‘Best Practice’ Benchmarking – Why Everyone Does It Now
- Do ‘Kitemarks’ Improve and Demonstrate Performance
- Using Quality Models for Self-Assessment
- Towards Practice: Choosing a Suite of Measures
- A More Measured Management?
Of these, the most valuable for me personally was the chapter on ‘The Performance of Measurement’. It examines how three ‘measurement leaders’ in the social enterprise sector go about the business of measuring performance. It presents research on three case studies - Groundwork (a network of environmental resource centres in the UK), PHS (a non-profit based in Seattle with a $50m turnover and the mission of ‘improving lives through jobs, social services and housing) and the New Economics Foundation (a London-based independent research and policy institute committed to building a just and sustainable economy) – and then draws out a number of common themes. These include the value of performance measurement systems being voluntaristic as compared to imposed, the difficulty of providing information which would simultaneously support requirements for performance judgements at institutional, managerial and professional levels, the considerable costs of performance measurement, and the ‘proliferation and churn’ in the number of measures typically used. This chapter provides rich evidence to support the key emerging conclusions in the field.
Finally, the author says in the Preface that he has ‘tried to write in a way that will be accessible to policy and practice communities as well as contributing to academic debates. In this the book succeeds admirably – it is written with a directness and vividness of style that puts it miles ahead in readability, compared to all other books on performance measurement in the public and non-profit sectors.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Best book on performance measurement in non-profit sector
21 Sep 2003
Format:Paperback
This is an excellent book. It is clearly written, well structured and up-to-date in its coverage. I especially liked the definition of `social enterprise', which can be a tricky concept: Paton simply says it is "an organisation where people have to be business-like but people are not in it for the money". This definition is essentially accurate, it is easy to apply and at the same time it is quite provocative - it challenges the reader to decide whether or not to agree that `people have to be business-like' in such organisations as charities, voluntary organisations, community groups, etc. The rest of the book makes out a good case for why being `business-like' is always important - but never enough in itself.
The book fills a large gap in the literature - the performance measurement of non-profit and voluntary organisations is a major issue in many parts of the world, especially where these organisations receive significant funding from the government sector and have to give an account for what they achieve with those funds. However, most of the previous books on this topic have either been `how-to-do-it' books with little reference to the academic literature or else rather laborious conceptual books with little reference to practice.
The book is in three parts. The first three chapters set the scene, locating the central issues of the book in the context of general public policy developments and the literature on performance measurement in organisations. The next four chapters present original research on eight different methods of performance measurement and/or performance improvement in social enterprises. The final two chapters draw the discussion together, highlighting the implications for managers and policy makers. The sequence of chapters is as follows:
- The Challenge of Social Performance
- Performance Management as Government Policy
- Taking Measures - Lessons from the Literature
- The Performance of Measurement
- `Best Practice' Benchmarking - Why Everyone Does It Now
- Do `Kitemarks' Improve and Demonstrate Performance?
- Using Quality Models for Self-Assessment
- Towards Practice: Choosing a Suite of Measures
- A More Measured Management?
Of these, the most valuable for me personally was the chapter on `The Performance of Measurement'. It examines how three `measurement leaders' in the social enterprise sector go about the business of measuring performance. It presents research on three case studies - Groundwork (a network of environmental resource centres in the UK), PHS (a non-profit based in Seattle with a $50m turnover and the mission of `improving lives through jobs, social services and housing) and the New Economics Foundation (a London-based independent research and policy institute committed to building a just and sustainable economy) - and then draws out a number of common themes. These themes include the value of performance measurement systems being voluntaristic as compared to imposed, the difficulty of providing information which would simultaneously support requirements for performance judgements at institutional, managerial and professional levels, the considerable costs of performance measurement, and the `proliferation and churn' in the number of measures typically used. This chapter provides rich evidence to support the key emerging conclusions in the field.
Finally, the author says in the Preface that he has `tried to write in a way that will be accessible to policy and practice communities as well as contributing to academic debates. In this the book succeeds admirably - it is written with a directness and vividness of style that puts it miles ahead in readability, compared to all other books on performance measurement in the public and non-profit sectors.
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