A prActicAl guide Benchmarking in european Higher education

CONCEPTS AND PRACTICES OF BENCHMARKING
Benchmarking in the public sector
Our introduction on the history of the term benchmarking already showed
that most applications of benchmarking were developed in the private sector
of the economy. Interesting examples can still be found there; it is notable
that benchmarking is possible even in the competition of private sector
organisations. As market-like governance mechanisms have become
fashionable in the public sector since the early 1980s benchmarking has also
entered public-sector organisations. Especially ‘New Public Management’
with its emphasis on (quasi-)markets, strong management, etc., has drawn
attention to instruments like quality assurance and benchmarking.
A problem may be that public organisations cannot use profits or similar
widely-known key performance indicators (KPI), which define a private business’s
success and which are therefore self-evident candidates for benchmarks.
However, even in private business, a single KPI does not denote a
healthy and prosperous firm: KPIs are always partial. For example, profits
may be pushed at the cost of employee satisfaction. KPIs have to be used in
balanced sets for management purposes—though for functional benchmarking
(of single processes), only one or a few may be needed. In higher education,
alternative KPIs to ‘profit’ have been developed. For instance, educational
performance can be indicated by retention rates, percentage of students
graduating on time, student satisfaction, alumni satisfaction, employer
satisfaction, etc. Research and innovation performance can be indicated by
numbers of publications, citation scores, number of patents, contract income,
numbers of spin-offs, etc. For services, similar lists can also be found or
developed as well (e.g. library loans, ICT use figures, students back on track
after counselling).
Yet often indicators are not available, especially not if one wants detailed
information about processes within organisations showing how performances
are reached. This makes it impossible to engage in competitive-type
benchmarking, or finding best-in-class benchmark organisations on the
basis of publicly available data.
42 A Practical Guide - Benchmarking in European Higher Education