A tool for measuring the performance in the R&D organizations

The purpose of this work is to measure the performance of public research organisations (universities, federal labs, etc.) with a quali-quantitative approach. The method built, called Syn, is similar to the Delphi procedure; it proposes some topics to a group of researchers in order that they may offer quantitative estimates on the performance of each research activity carried out in their institutes. The main feature of the general performance is captured with some average values and a learning process in rounds. The score of method is used to classify the structures in ranks. The final classification shows in the top, the institutes with a high performance, while in the down the research structures with a low performance: this is the signal of an organisational problem due to, for example, a poor work involvement and satisfaction. Moreover, the statistical analysis on estimates shows like: (1) the researchers of different bodies have dissimilar visions (perception) of research activities carried out inside; (2) the estimates are concentrated around value higher than arithmetic mean: the researchers overestimate the performance of their research institute but these results do not change the positions in the classification. The methodology has been tested on the institutes of Italian National Research Council located in Piemonte, a highly industrialised region in the North West of Italy. The R&D performance, measured with a quali-quantitative method, can be used in the analysis of the behaviour's institutes and it is useful to the management for increasing the efficiency of their organisations.