Integrating the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) and the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) Approaches for an Enhanced Police Performance Measurement System
Abstract
An effective performance measurement system is an integral part of modern police management. Police agencies have measured their performance against a very restricted set of crime-focused indicators, such as crime rates, arrests, response times, and clearance rates. Police performance should be measured across multiple dimensions to capture public values produced by modern police agencies.
This study set out to present an enhanced performance measurement system for police agencies by integrating the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approaches. The BSC provides the theoretical foundation for building a comprehensive performance measurement framework, while the DEA provides the analytical tool to test the theoretical framework. Integrating the DEA and the BSC approaches can create many synergy effects because they are complementary to each other.
A case-study approach was used to assess the feasibility of the integrated performance measurement system; to critically examine the ways in which performance information can be used for performance management in police agencies; and to put forward some recommendations regarding its successful application in practice. Police stations under the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency (SMPA) were chosen for conducting this case study.
The Dynamic-Network (DN) DEA, with assumptions of input-orientation, variable returns-to-scale (VRS), and slack-based measure (SBM), was run to estimate the proposed police performance measurement model. The DN DEA presented the overall performance over the entire observed period as well as dynamic changes of the perspective-period performance. The DN DEA also presents the practical ways in which inefficient police stations become more efficient by reporting the specific benchmarking objects and the target input and output levels for the inefficient police stations. When network and dynamic dimensions, derived from the BSC, are incorporated in a DNDEA model, a more comprehensive information can be obtained and thus enables accurate estimate of organizational performance as well as identify potential improvements in more detail.