Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the range of benchmarking applications that can be used in a principal‐agent relationship setting often found in the public sector. Design/methodology/approach – Collection and critical analysis of secondary data from relevant publications...

The two quality management concepts of benchmarking and poor quality cost measurement have been developed completely separate from each other and without any interaction between them. Both have also experienced some shortcomings that to some extent have limited their use and results. This paper...