Finally, and perhaps not unexpected, subjective measures
are seen as being most susceptible to measurement
problems, financial measures are considered the
least vulnerable, and nonfinancial measures fall somewhere
in between. In contrast, financial measures are
considered by the manufacturing managers to be most
sensitive to factors outside their control, subjective
measures the least, and nonfinancial measures again fall
in between. These results suggest that different measures
have different limitations. Although financial performance
may be measured more accurately, it typically
reflects the aggregate impacts of multiple factors and,
thus, may be relatively uncontrollable (e.g., aberrations
in financial performance caused by market shocks). In
contrast, while nonfinancial and subjective performance
evaluations may have lower measurement precision,
they are focused more easily on components of operations
that the manager can control.