IntroductionMeasuring performance seems to be the never-ending story of managers, consultants and academics. Many books, reports and papers deal with questions like "Which dimensions of performance should be measured? What is the role of performance measurement in corporate performance management? How can we find the balanced mix of performance measures? Shall we concentrate on shareholders' or stakeholders' point of view? How report and communicate performance information to users?" Reading different areas of "performance literature" like performance management systems, management control and accounting systems, external and internal reporting etc., all of them are dealing with performance measurement issues. However it seems that they concern "different worlds" and they cannot correspond together. Following this notion the question arises if there are some features which are consistent for all performance-relating topics. Because of different background, authors -respecting style which is favorite or ordinary in particular subject fields -contextualize performance issues in different ways. Moreover in some fields (like environmental management etc.) a little averse to expressions "performance" or "performance measurement" is evident because they are considered as profaned.
24This paper aims to formulate some principal questions which should be used as start-point for the conceptual framework. The performance measurement framework is proposed for application in both situations, while designing as well as analyzing systems or approaches to measure performance information. The paper is based on literature study followed by analysis and generalization.The paper is divided into two sections. First section brings some general comments to measurement for performance information as a set of specific activities. Second section shows the role of performance model design for performance measurement process. The role of performance measurement for performance management process is emphasized in this section.
Measurement for performance informationIn correspondence with performance the term "measurement" is used to characterize the status and progression in performance dimension of organizational existence. Despite of wide-spread application in professional literature as well as in everyday use there are some methodological objections regarding its usage in conjunction with performance.Wikipedia (2008) defines measurement as the estimation of the magnitude of some attribute of an object. In applied social sciences measurement is often based on scaling and comparative statements concerning the characteristics of an attribute. However, performance expresses complex quality of organizational existence rather than particular attribute which could be defined exhaustively. Insuperable impact of subjectivity by measurement process and inseparability from evaluating procedures belong to implicit characteristics of performance measurement. With some exaggeration Meyer (2005) states that "the performance of the firm is fundamentall...