Strategic performance measurement for defense organizations: A preliminary framework

Many public organizations, including defense organizations, are experiencing the need to demonstrate performance improvement to meet expectations of increasingly diverse and complex stakeholders. Several Armed Forces have therefore introduced performance measurement systems to support their top-level decision-making and reporting processes. However, significant factors hinder the design, implementation, and use of such systems in defense organizations. An important challenge identified by NATO nations pertains to the use of traditional frameworks such as the Balanced Scorecard or its derivatives for public sector organizations. For many military leaders, such frameworks lack face validity as they do not conceptualize critical defense information in a meaningful overarching structure that reflects the decision patterns of strategic defense decision-makers. Therefore, there is a need to design a framework that better reflects the priorities of defense departments. Following an initial literature review, qualitative data pertaining to eight NATO nations was collected through semi-structured questionnaires and the analysis of strategic-level documents. Whereas a six-phase thematic analysis of the data is ongoing, this paper reports on a preliminary framework resulting from the first three phases. This framework consists of themes structured along the means-ways-ends perspectives, which resembles the input-process-output logic model but also subscribes to strategic defense planning terminology. Mapping of the strategic objectives resulted in a visual representation of the causal link between strategic themes. This facilitates the communication of the strategy that connects key performance areas to the various defense stakeholders. Finally, the framework can be an important assessment tool to orient existing and future initiatives.