Performance measures should be linked to an organization's strategy in order to provide useful information for making effective decisions and shaping desirable employee behaviour. The pitfalls relating to the indiscriminate use of common maintenance performance indicators are discussed in this paper. It also reviews four approaches to maintenance performance measures. The value-based performance measure evaluates the impact of maintenance activities on the future value of the organization. The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) provides a framework for translating strategy into operational measures that collectively capture the critical requirements for sustaining the organization's success. System audits are the tool for measuring organizational culture, which in turn determines the appropriate approach to the organization of maintenance functions. The operational efficiency of an organization's maintenance function can be benchmarked with those of its counterparts in other organizations by using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Among these approaches, the one which builds on the BSC embraces the design principles of a good performance measurement system. To smoothen the adoption of the BSC approach to managing maintenance operations, a related research agenda is proposed in the concluding section.

An empirical study was conducted among eight similarly organized work groups numbering between 17 and 23 mechanics, operators, and supervisors each and employing similar and very sophisticated mechanical-harvesting equipment. Productivity of the higher-performing groups was double that of the lower performers. This article identifies key variables and their interactions in a model designed to explain the productivity variance. The model is developed from a sociotechnical systems perspective.

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This paper describes an empirical assessment of several hypotheses associated with organization design in the context of new and flexible technologies. Three distinct technologies were examined in four different geographical locations in Sweden, France, and Canada. The hypotheses illustrate how workplaces are being organized within the context of flexible, new technology, and the movement toward an emerging new paradigm of work. Flexible, new technologies and this paradigm are entering organizations at the same time. The former are changing the ground on which assumptions underlying the emerging paradigm of organization have been built. Several of the hypotheses examined have been revised as a consequence. The data from twelve companies are plotted on a matrix of organization design principles against organization design implementation to illustrate changing organization design patterns as well as geographic differences between the companies.