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Performance measurement: applying Return on Investment (ROI) in new domains

Funded by: abdi Ltd

Led by: Professor Rob Paton (The Open University Business School)

Background

Evaluating initiatives to determine effectiveness, value and impact is an increasingly important activity in private, public, NGOs and social enterprise organisations. Executives are faced with a myriad of possibilities to measure their organisation’s performance. One approach is to use the financial metric, return on investment (ROI), in an evaluation methodology/approach, such as that used by project partner abdi Ltd. They provide research and consultancy targeting learning & development practitioners in the corporate context. However, more recently, demand has increased from other practitioners (eg operations managers making process changes), as well as from other contexts (international development and health service). Interest in the closely related idea of Social Return on Investment (SROI) has also been increasing sharply in both government and the third sector.

Funding providing by abdi Ltd is being used to support a PhD studentship within the Business School. For more information on commissioning a PhD studentship for a specific project, please see our externally funded studentships page.

Aims and objectives

The objectives are to:

  • Devise a way of capturing ‘rich stories’ of attempts to implement/apply abdi’s recommended approach
  • Develop and test a method/framework for depicting and comparing different evaluation methodologies/approaches
  • Develop criteria/indicators for judging that an approach has been successful in a particular case/application

Methods

This study will use key informants to ascertain how initiatives using abdi’s recommended approach unfolds within corporate, health services and international development contexts.

This is an exploratory study, using mainly qualitative techniques. Initial thinking is for up to 12 lead informants to be chosen from among current or recent participants in training workshops, and for the progress of their initiatives to be tracked through interviews and documents as they introduce the methodology in their organisations.

Research team

Links

Research centre: Responsibility and Regulation (R&R)