e-infrastructure Roadmap for Open Science in Agriculture

Performance Management as a discipline, practice and area of study started in the 1990s and today adoption and application of performance practices continues to grow. It is a broad term and as a result, different groups understand the concept in different ways - is comprised of a collection of principles, tools and techniques to help an enterprises achieve its objectives. This paper presents a review of the literature in the field of performance management in various industries with the aim of transferring best practice into enterprises. The following paper is divided into four main parts. In the first part, we introduce some basic and key terms and definitions, including measures, indicators, metrics, performance measures or performance indicators, performance standards, performance management, key performance indicators. In this context, the key performance indicators are examined in the different functional areas, for example: finance, operations, customer, employees, sales/marketing, information technology, leadership and culture (management competence), environmental, corporate social responsibility and health & safety and supply chain effectiveness. In the second part, the research design and research methodology is described. The paper is based on an extensive review of secondary sources, including analysis and synthesis of domestic and foreign professional literary sources, mainly standards, methodologies, frameworks and models, studies, documents, journals related to this topic, monographs, handbooks, textbooks and websites. It is a descriptive investigation. The methods for preparation of scientific research are applied (study of scientific literature, working out the literature retrieval, working out the excerpts, their processing and classification, using the literature), the methods of gaining new data (document analysis), methods of data processing (such as analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, comparison and generalisation are used. Additional methods used are the analysis and interpretation of key performance characteristics and published data. In the third part of this paper, an overview is presented of the current key performance indicators usage and introduces key performance indicators best practices in selected enterprises. Although the best practices are specific for different industries, they can be applied and adapted to other public or private industry enterprises. In the final part, we clarify the findings - firstly, we summarize the key results and secondly we discuss the limitation of our work and suggest area for future research. The paper is a part of submitted VEGA project No. 1/0787/12, The Identification of Sustainable Performance Key Parameters in Industrial Enterprises within Multicultural Environment", which is currently being dealt at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Faculty of Materials Science and Technology in Trnava, Institute of Industrial Engineering, Management and Quality.