Developing performance measures and setting their targets for national research institutes based on strategy maps

Purpose – This paper aims to help research managers design the performance management process and select measures and indicators, which relate to the strategies of their organisations directly. Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, we will propose strategy maps for national research institutes (NRIs), so that the managers can describe the strategies of their organisations more clearly, accurately and logically. Also, we will propose a new method to set targets for key performance indicators (KPIs), which is named “Forecasting-Objective Achievement System (FOAS)”. Findings – The authors have explored the general rules of the research activity and proposed the strategic map for NRIs, so that the research managers can more clearly, accurately and logically describe the strategy for the organisational development strategy, and build the performance measurement indicators based on it. It allows the managers to transfer the strategy into clear and concrete action initiatives, and the corresponding performance evaluation indicators. Also, this paper proposed a new method for target-setting for performance indicator to drive NRIs do their best to achieve high performance. Research limitations/implications – First, this paper proposes a framework of strategy maps for NRIs to transfer the strategy into clear and concrete action initiatives, and the corresponding performance evaluation indicators. Also, this paper gives a case study of a research institute in the field of physics to derive KPIs based on its strategy maps, which can show the effectiveness of this approach. But this institute conducts mainly the basic research, and there are other NRIs with different types of research, such as applied research, which have different characteristics with the NRI in the case study. Originality/value – The authors propose the specific strategy maps for NRIs and a new method to set targets for KPIs. Further, the example of a national research institute is taken to analyze its strategy map and construct a performance measurement indicator system for it, so that the strategies in research management can be transferred to specific action initiatives. New ideas are provided for the performance measurement of national research institutes.