Benchmarking Definitions

The meaning of benchmarking from Hospitality Strategic Management, second edition text book is a tool for assessing the best practices of direct competitors and firms in similar industries, then using the resulting stretch objectives as design criteria for attempting to change organizational performance. This means that benchmarking is an indication for comparison or to evaluate and the definition from the text book is more to the business activities. Oxford Online Dictionary defines benchmarking as a standard or point of reference against which things may be compared. The definition from Oxford Online Dictionary is easier to understand but it is in general only. One of the most commonly quoted definitions is Benchmarking is the search for the best industry practices which will lead to exceptional performance through the implementation of these best practices (Camp, 1989). There are plenty of definitions available in the literature and according to Nandi and Banwet (2000), Spendolini (1992) has found out 49 definitions for benchmarking. Maire et al. (2005) have proposed that the multiple definitions which were proposed express various stages in the evolution of benchmarking and based on the definitions they have concluded that benchmarking passed four important stages of evolution. During the evolution of benchmarking, some of noted definitions were given by Bemowski (1991), Vaziri (1992), International Benchmarking Clearing House Design Committee (Lema and Price, 1995), Epper (1999), American Productivity & Quality Centre (1993), Dervitsiotis (2000), Freytag and Hollensen (2001), Sarkis (2001), Maire (2002), etc. to name a few. A latest definition of benchmarking states that: It is the process of identifying, understanding, and adapting outstanding practices from organizations anywhere in the world to help an organization improve its performance. It is an activity that looks outward to find best practice and high performance and then measures actual business operations against those goals (Kumar et al., 2006). According to G. Anand, Rambabu Kodali, (2008), benchmarking can be described as a continuous analysis of strategies, functions, processes, products or services, performances, etc.

compared within or between best-in-class organizations by obtaining information through appropriate data collection method, with the intention of assessing an organizations current standards and thereby carry out self-improvement by implementing changes to scale or exceed those standards.

References

Hospitality Strategic Management: concepts and cases / Cathy A. Enz. -2nd ed

Oxford Dictionaries Online, http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/benchmark?q=benchmarking#benchmark__4

Camp, R.C. (1989), Benchmarking: The Search for Industry Best Practices that Lead to Superior Performance, ASQC Quality Press, Milwaukee, WI.

Nandi, S.N. and Banwet, D.K. (2000), Benchmarking for world-class manufacturing concept, framework and applications, Productivity, Vol. 41 No. 2, pp. 189-200.

Maire, J-L., Bronet, V. and France, A. (2005), A typology of best practices for a benchmarking process, Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 45-60.

Spendolini, M. (1992), The Benchmarking Book, American Management Association Communications (AMACOM), New York, NY.

Kumar, A., Antony, J. and Dhakar, T.S. (2006), Integrating quality function deployment and benchmarking to achieve greater profitability, Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 290-310.

G. Anand, Rambabu Kodali, (2008),"Benchmarking the benchmarking models", Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 15 Iss: 3 pp. 257 - 291