Bench marking; Theoretical Perspectives, Models and its Applications in Accounting

In today competitive environment, organizational improvement is necessary for organization survival. Judgment about sufficiency and manner of improvement should be done by comparing with real world performance or benchmarking. Benchmarking is one of terms that often considered simple but it needs deep study to be understood correctly. Benchmarking is the continuous process of measuring one’s product, services and practices against the best ones as well as using that information to plan for future improvement. The benchmark can be driven from one’s own past or current performance, performance of another organization or the standard. Benchmarking has different usage and different types. A good benchmark should have significant characters and in benchmarking special phases should be passed. Although this process has a lot of benefits for organization but often it has some limitation and problems. If there are no initial ideas and conditions for improvement, benchmarking won’t have long term benefits. In this study, based on descriptive-analytical approach, the theoretical bases, models and benchmarking phases are explained and with analyzing a case, applications of benchmarking in accounting are examined.