How to achieve dynamic and flexible Performance Management Systems for collaborative processes

Abstract

One of the main characteristics of successful collaborative networks is their ability to continuously reformulating their processes. The, they can quickly get adapted to environment needs and therefore define more competitive processes. One of biggest weaknesses of Performance Management Systems (PMS) when dealing with collaborative processes associated to collaborative networks, is their low degree of both dynamicity and flexibility to get adapted to the changes that such collaborative processes experiment. The main changes that can take place are, among others, small or large modifications of the own processes, entrance and/or exit of new participants in the process, incorporation and/or elimination of processes, changes in objectives and/or strategies of processes of some participant, or even of the whole collaborative network, etc. All this brings continuous modifications over the components that conform the PMS. Then, it is necessary to structure certain mechanisms that will provide with both dynamicity and flexibility to the PMS. Otherwise, these PMS will become obsolete in the short-time and will be not useful anymore. Further, these PMS will not measure properly performance and then they will become ineffective, becoming the source of troubles. Scientific literature shows that most of the works that deal with PMS dynamicity and flexibility are focused on intra-organizational contexts, leaving almost apart the collaborative networks ambit. This work analyses those aspects that prevent to the PMS to be dynamic and flexible when applied to manage the performance of collaborative networks. In addition, we discuss and analyse several mechanisms that should be incorporated into the PMS, making them more dynamic and flexible. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2013.