Universities throughout the world are trending toward more performance based methods to capture their strengths, weaknesses and productivity. Hiroshima University has developed an integrated objective measure for quantifying multifaceted faculty activities, namely the “Achievement-Motivated Key Performance Indicator” (A-KPI), in order to visualize the strengths and weaknesses of the university, while balancing versatile faculty activities university-wide. We believe any reform efforts should be based on accurate understanding of the status quo through rigorous self-assessment. This uniquely developed KPI could be a starting point for shaping a stronger faculty body, with each motivated faculty member striving to achieve his or her professional expertise while balancing the distribution of overall efforts as a single institution with shared visions and missions. The individual A-KPI scores calculated for all the faculty members at Hiroshima University reveal that the faculty activities are unevenly distributed for some schools, with a majority of professors devoting their efforts to teaching and thesis advising, and much less toward academic publications and/or the acquisition of external funding. More balanced distributions between teaching and research oriented activities are observed for the faculties of other schools. Our analysis suggests that the overall performance would be improved through more efficient and well-balanced time allocation among faculty members.
Keywords: Faculty Productivity, Performance Indicators, Japanese Universities.
