Performance Models

Introduction

This article explores various models of organizational performance studied over recent decades and the increasing understanding of how individuals function and perform in organizations.

When assessed precisely, measures of individual performance are relevant across a variety of topics related to a company’s strategy and daily operations, including attracting, recruiting, and empowering the talent it needs. They provide a new basis for understanding and improving organizational performance.

Performance Models

Organizational performance can be approached through various models, which address aspects of its measurement and control on the one hand, and its conceptualization on the other.

Organizational performance can be approached through various models, which address aspects of its measurement and control on the one hand, and its conceptualization on the other.

Until the 1980s, management control research had focused on performance measures within the cybernetic model, an extension of the more popular command-and-control model that had dominated until the 1950s. Considering new individual and cultural factors alongside non-financial measures has enabled the holistic model to gradually overcome some limitations of the cybernetic model. Since the 2000s, thanks to capabilities from software platforms, the Internet, and later AI, Management Control System (MCS) packages have integrated and powered management control systems as integral parts of organizational management, most often aligned with holistic models. The three grand models are summarized in this table and detailed in separate articles.

Performance Management

Models	Focus
Command and Control	Traditional hierarchical top-down approach, with original management control systems for planning and controlling.
Cybernetic	Accounts for the first-order loop feedback, learning, and communication in addition to financial and production metrics.
Holisitc	Extends the cybernetic model with a second-order feedback loop and emphasizes the relationships and interactions among the organization’s different parts, including its culture, vision, mission, and reward systems.

Regarding its conceptualization, several approaches have been proposed to categorize performance by context: research, society, leadership, organizational development, and more. For example, the models can be grouped into three categories according to their origins in economics, organizational studies, and social research. Others have suggested categorizing them into three categories: objectives, systems, and stakeholders which is the one we adopted here. The value model was analyzed separately from the stakeholders model because it provides a distinct, overall understanding of how individuals and organizations behave. The non-performance model was added because it stands apart and continues to be a powerful model for understanding and managing performance. This grouping allows highlighting different analytical focus points, limitations, and relationships with management control systems.

Performance Conceptualization

Models	Focus
Objectives	Objectives are set and managed at different levels of the organization. Techniques such as cost-benefit analysis, management by objectives, individual criteria, or behavioral goals are used.
Systems	Systemic models emphasize the importance of an organization's means, such as inputs, outputs, resource acquisition, and processes. They include the operations research model, the structural contingency model, and the culturalist and social regulation models.
Stakeholders	Stakeholders' performance models emphasize the expectations of individuals and interest groups that are either within or surrounding the organization. It includes the organizational development model, satisfaction, and expectancy models.
Values	Value models extend the stakeholder model to understand organizations in terms of individual values and preferences. The concept of values encompasses broad aspects of social behavior that, unlike others, can be described, measured, and shared.
Non-performance	It is easier, more precise, consensual, and beneficial to address performance issues by problems and faults rather than by skills and performance criteria.

Organizational performance models have evolved over time, not to replace earlier ones but to improve them, expand their scope, and develop new models that meet current needs. Since the 2000s, with the rise of the Internet and more recently, AI, our ability to collect and analyze people's data has greatly increased. Similarly, management control systems have advanced, enhancing our capacity to better understand and manage people. How organizations can improve their performance over time is closely connected to how individuals and teams can enhance their performance.

Individual Performance

As the conceptualization of organizational performance and management control systems has dramatically progressed over the past decades, so has the understanding of people and their management. Although it takes more time than in technology, research in the social sciences has had the opportunity to build, break, challenge, and test the limits of many models and techniques. Adaptive profiles emerged from research in the 1950s in the USA and gradually began to penetrate organizations of all sizes worldwide.

Adaptive profiles measure how people perform in context, their social behavior, adaptation efforts, and engagement.

Just like in the entertainment industry, actors perform in various ways, taking on different roles in different movies, influenced not only by their individual characteristics but also by how they are asked to act on stage. How does personal performance on the field actually happen, and what results does it produce? The adaptive profiles offer some answers.

The same concept applies in sports, where team members are expected to collaborate and adapt their behavior when playing together, rather than strictly sticking to their personalities and positions on the field. In companies, different roles also require acting and adapting in various ways.

Adaptive profiles, like the one on the right, are constructed using a two-question, open-scenario, adjective format. The process helps remove biases and improve objectivity. The results are profiles that subtly show how people behave, feel, and think. They provide insights to maximize individual performance in flow, ways to support adaptation and engagement, and the conditions to prevent underperformance. The profiles are also used to enhance organizational performance.

Today, markets are familiar with tools that measure traits and types. These tools are widely used in recruitment and coaching. Adaptive profiles differ because they are based on factors. They add details that help improve individual assessments by eliminating major limits in how measures are represented, learned, and applied, and providing greater precision across many applications in recruitment, management, leadership, and organizational development..

Organizational Performance

Adaptive profiles are also used at the position, team, company, and even industry and societal levels, to represent the performance expected for jobs and for small- to large-group activities. Working with social behavior at the organizational level is especially useful and practical because behaviors are observable. We can describe, analyse, and discuss them more effectively than when working with abstract concepts that can only be inferred rather than observed. As evidenced by performance models based on values, working on social behavior applies universally to a variety of situations, stakeholders, industries, and cultures.

Social Performance

By aggregating adaptive profiles, we can analyse a group's social performance.

An organization and team’s success relies not only on each individual's participation but also on their ability to focus their collective efforts. Leaders and managers, as in sports with coaches and captains, play a vital role in building group cohesion, increasing team member involvement, and maintaining high levels of engagement. But how do these performances on the field actually occur, and what results do they generate? The adaptive profiles can explain that.

In sports, the trust and cohesion built during training are crucial to success. The disengagement of one teammate can impact the rest of the team. During competition, coaches and captains give real-time calls and directions. Some team members may also assume leadership roles. The team’s success relies on social performance and support from leadership, the organization, and the broader community, including educators, families, sponsors, and advocates. In sports, this also includes supporters.

Strategic Performance

Strategic performance, from a social behavior standpoint, can be established to determine how success will be achieved.

As with other characteristics of experience and skills, some social behaviors are expected in positions. The adaptive profiles enable the modeling of expected behaviors in jobs. They enable comparisons of how those behaviors occur over time for individuals in those jobs. Does performance occur at the group level as intended, with appropriate fit among people and with enough diversity? The answer comes by comparing the adaptive profiles of individuals, positions, teams, and organizations. Once a company's management has defined the behaviors expected in positions and teams, aggregating profiles and calculating strategic indicators based on them formalizes the intent and helps manage performance gaps over time.

Discussing these behaviors at the team and organizational levels increases the likelihood of reaching consensus. If social behaviors must be expressed differently across jobs and teams at varying levels of intensity and frequency, recruitment and management must ensure this.

In our sports example, different social behaviors are expected of team members during competition. When training and socializing, athletes are expected to exhibit other social behaviors. How does their profile match what’s expected of them during training and while competing? Once aggregated, the adaptive profiles provide the answer.

Social Behavior Across Other Forms of Performance

As illustrated on the right, a more nuanced understanding of social behavior provides insights into other performance models, including how they are discussed, implemented, and complement one another. Whether a company deploys command-and-control, cybernetic, or holistic management control systems, its approach to performance analysis and management is informed by the adaptive profiles. This is summarized in the table below.

By comparing management intent with individuals’ adaptive profiles (measuring which social behaviors are present vs. absent), organizations can move beyond intuition and ensure their strategic focus—whether systemic, cybernetic, holistic, or values-based—is informed by a rigorous understanding of their most central asset: their people.

Performance from a Social Behavior Standpoint

Models	Insights from Adaptive Profiles
Objectives	Where objectives are managed through techniques such as Management by Objectives (MBO) and behavioral goals, the adaptive profile provides the individual criteria for assessing how the person will set, communicate, and meet those goals.
Systems	These models emphasize organizational means (inputs, processes, outputs). The adaptive profile provides a critical input metric—the human factor—that affects processes (e.g., collaboration) and outputs (e.g., results).
Stakeholders	These models focus on the expectations of internal and external interest groups. The adaptive profile provides an understanding of the individual and group values and behaviors that drive these stakeholders' satisfaction and expectations.
Values	This is the model that the adaptive profile most directly informs, as it extends the stakeholder model by understanding organizations in terms of individual values and preferences, which are expressed through social behavior. The adaptive profile provides a framework for describing, measuring, and sharing these values across the organization.
Non-performance	This model suggests it is often easier to address performance by focusing on problems and faults rather than skills and criteria. The adaptive profile aids this by clearly identifying conditions that can prevent underperformance (e.g., high adaptation effort and disengagement) and by providing precise language (observable behavior) for problem resolution.