Performance Management in Defence Organisations (Gestion des performances dans les organisations de defense)

This report describes a study to investigate the extent to which, and how, strategic-level decision makers in twelve NATO and partner defence organisations make use of performance management and measurement systems to assess their organization. Based on a mixed methods approach combining quantitative and qualitative data from twelve nations with the results of a systematic literature review, this work proposes a new Defence Performance Management Framework DPMF. The DPMF comprises a depiction of characteristic high-level defence performance categories, their underlying relationships, and possible performance measures for the various categories. It provides the senior defence leadership with an instrument to assess how they define and measure strategic goals so that they can better orient their activities and outputs to their strategic goals and key performance indicators. Assessing the design of performance measurement systems across the participating nations generates insights that merit reflection with regard to areas such as science and technology, and information and intelligence that seem to be highly neglected, or categories that are generally poorly supported by metrics such as the collaboration between nations. Finally, the report highlights insights on defence performance management provided by an expert panel as well as important areas for future research.