An integrated network model for performance management: a focus on healthcare organisations

Multricriteria methods provide the decision maker with a tool to analyse complex problems involving several conflicting factors and stakeholders. This paper highlights the advantages of a multicriteria approach, paying a specific attention to the analytic network process (ANP), for performance management. The ANP may support the manager of an organisation to evaluate performances by taking into account all the perspectives typical of the balanced scorecard (BSC) approach and providing a mathematical model to manage performance. The use of ANP and BSC in an integrated network model (INM), beyond the determination of the weights to assign to perspectives, objectives and metrics, allows to evaluate the cause-effect relationships between these elements, derive performance indices for the elements of the network, analyse the effect of a decision and prioritise the areas requiring improvement. In particular, this paper focuses on the application of the INM to a public healthcare organisation.