There’s a plethora of High-Performance Organizations frameworks. All of them suggest sets of factors, or dimensions, of what constitutes high-performance. The factors ideally represent the buttons that (managers of) organizations can press to improve performance.

The challenges are many. What is performance, how can we define it? Do all stakeholders in the organization have the same definition of performance, and if they have, do they assess organizational performance in the same manner? And if we have decided on a gross set of indicators, can we actually measure and improve performance?

In this track we challenge you to review high-performance approaches, and to apply them to one or more organizations. Typically, this will entail:

• A critical review of literature;
• Interviews with stakeholders in the organization;
• Design a measurement instrument;
• Collection and analysis of data using this instrument;
• Conclusions on the validity of your model and the measurement instrument;
• Recommendations to the organization(s) involved, and/or organizations in general.

While most HPO frameworks suggest a one-size-fits-all, undifferentiated approach to understanding organizational performance, organizations differ in terms of mission, history, ownership, type of industry, size and location. In this track, candidates are challenged to adapt general, relevant HPO frameworks to industries (sectors) of their choice. Examples of (sub)sectors are:

• Manufacturing companies
• IT-companies
• NGOs
• Banks
• (Parts of) government.

It is conceivable that certain dimensions of high-performance need to be added, adapted, or specified in accordance with whatever is most crucial and/or typical in understanding sectoral performance.

It is observed that organizations operating within supply chains, tend to strive for suboptimal performance, due to lack of information or asymmetric information between the links in the chain. Two or more organizations in supply chains can improve their individual performance and the performance of the supply chain, by sharing information. However, this puts more emphasis on interfirm trust, and goal congruence. Differences in organizational cultures may hamper effective collaboration through partnerships.

In this track, students are challenged to see beyond the organizational boundaries, and apply high-performance thinking to (parts of) supply chains that organizations are operating in. Research in this track can be linked to our research on blockchain organizing.

For-profit organizations can wonder how HPO-thinking could be of benefit to them, as financial profits and growth are generally considered sound indicators of success and performance – at least in the short run. One argument in favor of HPO-thinking is that it’s aimed at long-term performance, and is broader than financial performance. In addition, having hard indicators on (financial) performance, is different from understanding which buttons to press in order to improve performance. Another argument would be that, while profits are a hard, unambiguous indicator of financial performance, different stakeholders may have different views of what they perceive as high- performance. In addition, financial profits tend to be influenced by incidental factors (luck; the state of the economy; and so on), and a poor reflection of long-term viability of the organization. For all of these reasons, it is relevant to link HPO-factors to performance as perceived by the stakeholders of the

organization. In this track, candidates are challenged to think of ways to measure perceived (or subjective) performance, as opposed to hard financial performance.

As an additional track, and on a more general level, candidates can apply stakeholder analysis, in both quantitative and qualitative designs. This is especially relevant for large, complex organizations that have an impact on many groups of stakeholders with potentially conflicting interests.

While most HPO frameworks and approaches, for good reasons, assume that performance is indicated by multiple factors, it is often more practical and equally relevant to zoom in on specific dimensions. For example, while some HPO-frameworks use long-term orientation as one of several dimensions, and measure it through a small set of items in, for example, a survey, it would be relevant to zoom in on this very aspect in relative isolation, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the role of adopting a long-term orientation on (long-term, high) performance. It is conceivable that various stakeholders disagree most on this dimension, with implications for relations between (short-term, profit-oriented) managers and employees who value career development and job security; or shareholders looking at return on investment, versus stakeholders focusing on long-term environmental impacts. This track can be linked to stakeholder analysis. Apart from long-term orientation, any other HPO-dimensions discussed in literature can be used. We mention:

• Organizational culture
• Leadership
• Continuous innovation
• (Internal) communication
• Market orientation