Performance improvement is high on the agenda of many companies around the world and with the growing number of improvement models now available care has to be taken to adopt an approach that will yield the most attractive return on investment. This paper compares and contrasts two widely known and wellpublicized improvement models: Kaplan and Norton's Balanced Scorecard and the EFQM Excellence Model. Each consists of a non-prescriptive template offering managers a relatively small number of categories of key performance metrics to focus on. Here, they are examined from a critical perspective with regard to ®ve central issues represented by ®ve questions relating to objectives, strategies and plans, target setting, reward structures and information feedback loops. The analysis conducted reveals that despite having some signi®cant differences both approaches seem to be developed from similar concepts. The paper concludes that it is dif®cult to ®nd a perfect match between a company and a performance measurement framework and that further research should concentrate on how to implement strategic performance frameworks effectively in speci®c types of organization.

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Purpose-This study explores the impact of cultural values on the importance individuals assign to project success/failure factors.Design/methodology/approach-Themes emerging from 40 interviews of project practitioners based in Brazil, China, Greece, Nigeria, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States are integrated with literature evidence to design a survey instrument. 1313 practitioner survey responses from the eight countries are analysed using multi-group, structural equation modelling. Research limitations -The snowballing method used to gather survey data and analysis of relationships at individual level reduce generalisability.Practical implications -The results reveal insights on how best to match the cultural values of project participants to project characteristics. They also increase knowledge on the likely perceptual differences among culturally-diverse individuals within projects.Originality/value -This research contributes to the literature on culture in project environments by defining a factor structure of multiple-dependent project success/failure indicators and increases insight on how specific cultural values may impact on the perception of the so-defined project success/failure factors.3

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Most studies of the management of the technological innovation process cover the range of activities that culminate in the commercial introduction of a new product. In certain sectors of industry, however, especially those characterised by extended product lifecycles, continued competitiveness depends on vigorous and continuous product improvement, i.e. on the process of ‘re‐innovation’ to satisfy evolving user requirements. Ongoing research at SPRU has investigated the process of re‐innovation in a number of industry sectors, and the paper presents material relating to two of the characteristic patterns of re‐innovation identified in this research. The first characteristic pattern is re‐innovation combining the existing with the new. Two brief case studies are presented. In both cases, the manufacturer and customer gained significant benefits from this re‐innovation strategy. For the manufacturer there were reduced development and testing costs, scale and learning curve benefits, distributed inventories of spares and servicing experience. For the customer there were familiarity benefits and reduced entry risks associated with proven reliability of parts and sub‐systems. The second, and more general pattern of re‐innovation is based on the concept of the ‘robust design’. This is a basic design which has sufficient inherent technological slack or flexibility to enable it to evolve into a significant design family of variants. Product design families offer the producer economies of scale in R&D, manufacturing, marketing and sales and servicing. They offer the user learning from experience, the enhanced possibility of user‐inspired modifications, a wider range of price/ performance packages and rapid adaptations to changing environments. Robust designs can effectively combine economies of scale with economies of scope; they are strategically more flexible than leanly configured designs which satisfy only transient user requirements.

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