Controlling for Organizational Performance

When you hear the word performance, what do you think of? A summer evening concert by a local community orchestra? An Olympic athlete struggling for the finishing line in a close race? A Southwest Airlines gradient agent in Fort Myers, Florida, loading passengers as efficiently as possible in order to meet the company’s twenty minute gate change in direction goal? Performance is all of these things. It’s the end result of an activity. And whether that activity is hours of profound practice before a concert or race or carrying out job responsibilities as efficiently and effectively as possible, performance is what results from that activity.

Managers are concerned with organizational performance — the accumulated results of all the organization’s work activities. It’s a versatile concept, but managers need to understand the factors that contribute to organizational performance.

Measures of Organizational Performance

It’s not by accident that NBA basketball players are taking a lot more three-point shots than they did a few years back. In 2012, the average NBA team was taking 18.4 three-point shots per game. In 2017, the average was up nearly 50 percent to 27 shots. Using data science and data analytics, team analysis showed that while a three point shot had only a 35 percent chance of going in, it still led to more points than a two-point shot taken closer to the basket. In this case, data analysis acted as a performance measure and helped coaches improve their…