International Journal of Operations & Production Management

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify whether there exists a relationship between the level of completeness of a strategic performance management (SPM) system implementation and the advantages and disadvantages an organization experiences from this system.

Design/methodology/approach – Advantages and disadvantages encountered during the implementation and use of an SPM system are collected from the literature and tested during extensive interviews at 17 prominent Dutch organizations (with 52 interviewees in total). During the interviews the level of completeness of the SPM system implementation is also assessed. Subsequently, the advantages, disadvantages and level of SPM system implementation completeness are related.

Findings – The research results show that organizations that have fully completed the SPM implementation gain more financial and non-financial advantages and experience less disadvantages than organizations that are still in the process of implementing such a system. Organizations that have almost completed the implementation of the SPM system already gain qualitative advantages from this system, but they experience fewer financial advantages.

Research limitations/implications – The main limitation of the research is that the number of organizations investigated is limited in number and they are all profit sector companies from The Netherlands. Preferably, the number, sector and country coverage of the organizations should be increased in order to get a better spread of SPM system implementation completion stages and the experienced advantages and disadvantages.

Practical implications – Management now knows which advantages are to be expected at which stage of SPM implementation completeness, and can use the research results to convince staff that an SPM system will only yield full benefits to the organization when it has been completely implemented.

Originality/value – The need for efficient and effective SPM systems has increased over the past decade and the successful implementation and use of these systems have become of paramount importance to organizations. In this respect, one issue has been underexposed in the literature thus far, namely: the relationship between the level of completeness of the SPM implementation and the benefits organizations experience. This paper provides an overview of the main advantages and disadvantages to be expected at various stages of SPM implementation completeness.