Discrete Event Simulation (DES) has been widely used in modelling health-care systems for many years and a simple citation analysis shows that the number of papers published has increased markedly since 2004. Over the last 30 years several significant reviews of DES papers have been published and we build on these to focus on the most recent era, with an interest in performance modelling within hospitals. As there are few papers that propose or illustrate general approaches, we classify papers according to the areas of application evident in the literature, discussing the apparent lack of genericity. There is considerable diversity in the objectives of reported studies and in the consequent level of detail: We discuss why specificity dominates and why more generic approaches are rare.

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It is increasingly common to describe organizations as sets of business processes that can be analysed and improved by approaches such as business process modelling. Successful business process modelling relies on an adequate view of the nature of business processes, but there is a surprising divergence of opinion about the nature of these processes. This paper proposes a conceptual framework to organize different views of business processes under four headings. It also aims at providing an integrated discussion of the different streams of thought, their strengths and limitations, within business process modelling. It argues that the multifaceted nature of business processes calls for pluralistic and multidisciplinary modelling approaches.

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PurposeTo discuss some of the reasons why performance measurement systems in public services can lead to dysfunctional consequences even when people operate with the best of intentions.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws together literature from the UK public sector, from writers in performance measurement and from cultural insights in anthropology to understand why some of these perverse effects occur.FindingsThough many reasons are cited for public service performance measurement regimes, it is clear that control aspects dominate the others. This, when allied to an unthinking use of cybernetic metaphors, is what can lead to dysfunctionality.Originality/valueThe paper should appeal to those who wish to improve the performance of performance measurement systems in public services and to those who wish to understand why things can go wrong.