Reports on a survey, conducted among a cross‐section of organizations, to establish the current state of benchmarking and to attempt to project its future developments. Reveals that determining the mechanisms for the transfer of best practices within an organization is a high‐priority issue....

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...