Performance Measurement: A Comparative Study of EVA and Traditional Performance Measurement Techniques

Moullin defined performance measurement as, “Performance measurement is evaluating how well organizations are managed and the value they deliver for customers and other stakeholders”. According to Kelvin, ‘When you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it’. According to Anon, ‘You cannot manage what you cannot measure’. The Economic Value Added (EVA) framework developed by the Stern Stewart & Company is gradually replacing the traditional measures of financial performance due to its robustness and its immunity from "creative accounting".
Fortune magazine has called it "today's hottest financial idea and getting hotter" and management guru Peter Drucker referred to it as a measure of total factor productivity. The traditional measures for performance measurement, suffer from some serious limitations which are the main reason that these traditional methods based on earnings can’t be used as a reliable measure of performance measurement. Hence, there is the need of new approaches for the performance measurement which takes stakeholder’s perspective into consideration and shareholders wealth into consideration.
EVA is a better performance measurement tool and it has been proved in the research done on 10 companies in India. EVA has been compared with traditional techniques like ROI, ROE, EPS, NVA and MVA and the results are presented. Suggestive measures have also been given at the end and reference tables are also given. The research will e beneficial for academicians and people associated with finance.