Broadening the Scope of Benchmarking

Over the last few years, ‘benchmarking’ advanced to a key word in organizational development and change management. Originally a tool in business studies to search for best practice that led to superior performance, increasingly benchmarking also became practice in non‐profit and public institutions. Notably, the European Commission uses benchmarking as an instrument to monitor its employment guidelines. The radar chart approach is one of a number of special analytical tools that has been developed in this connection. The paper discusses the advantages and limits of benchmarking labour market performance by radar charts, recommends a broadening of the scope by using the employment systems approach and provides, in both cases, examples of application.