A state of the art and comparison of approaches for performance measurement systems definition and design

To control their enterprises in a complex environment, decision-makers need to measure their enterprise regularly to perpetuate. For that, they use a specific set of performance indicators grouped in a coherent system named performance measurement systems (PMS). Such systems are generally defined and implemented using different methods. As business performance measurement appeared from the 1900s, a large number of approaches developed by researchers and practitioners have appeared since those years until today. They were not designed for the same purpose and on the same basis and each of them has advantages and disadvantages to measure optimally the performance. So, decision-makers have difficulties to choose among these methods the most appropriate to their needs when they want to design and implement their customised PMS. The objective of this paper is to present the main concepts that approaches are based on, to present a state of the art as exhaustive as possible of the approaches and methods themselves and to make a comparison between them in order to allow decision-makers to choose among them the one or a combination of several ones which would efficiently suit to their needs to reach their global objective of PMS design and implementation.