The high performance organization: proposed definition and measurement of its performance

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to arrive at a general definition of an HPO and a (practical) way to measure an HPO. Managers are looking for techniques to strengthen their organizations in a way that they cannot only cope with threats but could also quickly take advantage of opportunities, and thus, grow and thrive. The academic and especially the practitioner fields reacted on this “thirst for high performance knowledge” with a plethora of books and articles on the topic of high performance organizations (HPOs). These publications each came with their own description and measurement of HPOs, which created a lot of confusion among practitioners. Design/methodology/approach In this study the following reserach question is answered: how can an HPO be defined and its performance measured? So that with the answer, this paper can take away the aforementioned confusion. This paper does this by conducting an extensive systematic review of the literature on HPO, after which this paper synthesizes the findings into a proposal on how to define and measure the HPO. Findings This paper was able to obtain from the literature a list of definitions and measurements for an HPO. The common denominator in these definitions and measurements turned out to be respondents given their opinion on the effects of the organizational practices they apply on organizational performance vis-à-vis that of competitors. This paper concluded therefore that an HPO should be defined and measured relative to competitors and should be based on the perception of managers and employees of the organization: An HPO is an organization that achieves results that are better than those of its peer group over a longer period of time. Research limitations/implications With the answer on the research question, this paper fills the current gap in the definition and measurement literature on HPOs, and thus, has moved the research into HPOs forward, as researchers can use these research results in their future studies on high performance and HPOs. Originality/value Although there is a plethora of literature on high performance and HPOs no univocal definition and measurement of the HPO can be found. This study provides for the first time an academically well-founded definition and measurement method.

Learnings from a successful transformation to a high-performance organization: a longitudinal case study

“…The third HPO diagnosis in 2020 showed that CoIA for all intents and purposes had become, in 5 years, an HPO with a score of 8.4. Basically only HPO factor Continuous Improvement and Renewal was lagging behind the other HPO factors, a result which is often found at other organizations (de Waal, 2020 ). Interestingly, the improvement of the original three attention points of the first HPO diagnosis had persevered.…”

“…The HPO Framework was developed after an extensive review of 290 academic and practitioner publications on high performance (de Waal 2020 ). For each of the 290 studies, elements that the authors indicated as being important for becoming a HPO were identified and categorized.…”

“…The data of the respondents were statistically analyzed (de Waal 2020 ). In the first step of this statistical analysis, a principal component analysis with oblimin rotation was performed.…”

The impact of self-directed team on high-performance organization with the mediating role of knowledge sharing culture: Organizational support as a moderator

“…The concept of a high-performance organization has been extensively researched. Scholars have, in the past, examined this subject from several angles, with various specific goals and with various interpretations ( de Waal, 2021 ). This reflected the difficulties and the need to provide a unified definition of high-performance organizations (HPO).…”

The Influence of the Dimensions of Agency’s Capacities to the P E R F O R M a N C E I N G E N E R a T I N G O W N S O U R C E S R E v E N U E S I N T H E G O v E R N M E N T a G E N C I E S I N T a N Z a N I A

“…The main objective of this study is to investigate the relationship of the dimensions of agency's capacities to the performance in generating own source revenues. The capacity, of which this study is referring to, is an organization's potential to achieve its mission and objectives (Tran et al, 2021) based on the extent to which it has certain attributes that have been identified as critical to goal achievement (Waal, 2021). To be consistent with other studies such as Horodnic (2018), Sukoco et al (2021) and Shine (2019), the capacity is also defined as internal related factors associated with institutional arrangement and contingent structures that can have positive influence on the performance (Waal, 2021) in generating own source revenues.…”