Thread: effectiveness vs efficiency

I met a sentence

ISO 9001:2000 aims at guaranteeing the effectiveness (but not necessary the efficiency) of an organization.

“effectiveness but not efficiency.” What's the difference? Help me to understand it.

My understanding of your quote is that by effectiveness they mean how well the organization achieves their goals. The efficiency they speak of is well, how efficient they acheive effectiveness. For example, the time and resources spent to be effective is efficiency in this example. I hope that kind of helps. =/

You could easily get 10 different valid answers to this question. But, for what it's worth, here's my perspective:

Well, efficiency does have a scientific definition: the ratio between work output and work input. (or: the ratio between energy output and energy input).
Thus a machine which requires 80MJ of electrical energy to do 60MJ of work would have a 75% efficiency.

By analogy, one could assume that in a business or industrial context that the term 'efficiency' would always be used to refer to a similar idea. For example, the relationship between the gross output of a business process and the input, for example expressed in financial or monetary terms.

The effectiveness of a process, on the other hand, is the extent to which the process contributes to the achievement of your purpose. Notice that this is not a scientific term (although it may be used in engineering) because the concept 'purpose' is not relevant (well not in physics, anyway, I think).
In business the purpose could be considered to be creating a profit for shareholders/owners.
Alternatively you might consider the purpose to be the successful creation of 1000 units of a particular product.

--

Obviously there is considerable overlap between these ideas and in non-scientific contexts the distinction is very murky - i.e. people use them in slightly different and confused ways; especially those who have neither scientific training nor a scientific mindset.

You could expect the ISO people to have a very clear idea of these terms. Since their purpose is to maintain minimum standards, it is very natural for them to point out that adherence to their standards will aid an organisation in its effectiveness (achievement of purpose, e.g. high quality products) but not necessarily its efficiency (consider the term 'cost-effective' .. which is more like efficiency ) - which correlates more directly with profit.

How about taking Britain's Royal Mail service as an example.

When it was a nationalised industry it was effective (letters usually arrived on time and rarely went missing), but extremely inefficient (the cost per delivered letter was far greater than the price of a stamp, so they were operating at a loss).

Since it has been privatised it has become much less effective (thousands of late/ lost letters every day), but much more efficient (cost per delivered letter is now less than the price of a stamp, they are operating at a profit).

It took me a lot of time to repeatedly scan all the explanations. Thanks, I think I understand it now (теперь). In my mind it is like:
An organization is effective if it satisfies the needs of its clients;
An organization is efficient if it satisfies the needs of its owners.
I hope it is more or less correct.

Originally Posted by Tu-160

It took me a lot of time to repeatedly scan all the explanations. Thanks, I think I understand it now (теперь). In my mind it is like:
An organization is effective if it satisfies the needs of its clients;
An organization is efficient if it satisfies the needs of its owners.
I hope it is more or less correct.

A funny way to put it . It may be true in some cases, but not always.

Effectiveness is to a certain degree a matter of viewpoint. As mentioned in the other posts, effective tool, procedure, organization etc is one which achieves its goals (or the goals which its user or creator has in mind). Now, different people may have different ideas about an organization's goals. So an org which is very effective from viewpoint of one person (who thinks that it achieves its goals very well) may be utterly ineffective in eyes of another person (who thinks that it doesn't do what it is supposed to do).

Efficient organizatin is one which works with high КПД - little or no wasted labor, little or no wasted time, little or no wasted materials etc. In other words, it uses its resources well.

By the way, if someone is referred to as an efficient worker, it most often implies s/he is effective too, because who wants efficency which doesn't lead to getting things done?

does anyone know why my magnum opus was deleted? probably it's my fault

Originally Posted by waxwing

does anyone know why my magnum opus was deleted? probably it's my fault

Deleted? What are you talking about? It right there, the third post in this thread

I'm sorry, mistake. Installed new computer today, all kinds of weird things happening.

translations, maybe you should explain for Tu in Russian. Would be much easier, after all.

Effective - Чтобы делать что-то effectively, вещью надо просто делает задачу, которую оператор хочет.
In order to be effective, the object must only do something correctly.


Efficient - Чтобы делать что-то efficiently, вещью надо использовать мало материалов.
Ресурсосберегающий (resource saving?), я думаю.
In order to be efficient, the object must conserve resources in doing the job.

Originally Posted by Tu-160

I met a sentence

ISO 9001:2000 aims at guaranteeing the effectiveness (but not necessary the efficiency) of an organization.

“effectiveness but not efficiency.” What's the difference? Help me to understand it.

Мне кажется, что это значит... Что-то работает, но использует слишком много материалов.

Я надеюсь, что это помогает Вам.
Извините за ошибок.

Originally Posted by smartdude

Извините за ошибок.

За ошибки.

Originally Posted by smartdude

I'm satisfied with my general knowledge.

Maybe it's a little too general.

the only real way i can answer your question is to use an analogy.

Lets say you have too many (i forget how to spell squirell in english so to save face i'll do it in russian) белки running around your backyard and you hate them and you want to kill them all.

Now, an Effective way would be to just shoot them all dead. It is effective because your goal is to kill all the белки. They wont be wounded, or maimed, only killed. And it is effective. It is an Effective way to kill the poor белки, to shoot them.

Now, you might say. It is not effecent to shoot them, because there are hundreds of белки and your gun only holds 5 bullets... You'd be out there for days, maybe weeks shooting at the poor белки. Hm What is a more effecient way to kill them ? Maybe to flood your back yard and down them all at once ! This is both effective, because it kills them, and it's effecient, it gets rid of them all at one time.

SO basically "effectiveness but not efficiency" means "Do what you need to do, any way you know how to do it"

If your goal is killing белки. Kill them any way to make sure they are all dead, it doesn't matter how, just make sure you Effectivly kill them.

If your goal is to take over chechniya.

You would say "what is an Effective way to kill chechens ? ah, with guns" Is it effecient? No, not really, they deserve much worse deaths than that, but i hope you understand it a little better now.


Effective - what you do.
Effecient - how well you do it.

If there is a hunter who can shoot good, and always hit what he is shooting at, but he can never actually kill anything, u can say he is effective, because he can shoot good with his gun, but he is not really effecient. How can he be called an effecient hunter if he never brings any animals home ?

If there's a bad squirrel-based analogy, I'm yet to hear it.

Originally Posted by Dogboy182

Originally Posted by smartdude

Извините за ошибок.

За ошибки.

Originally Posted by smartdude

I'm satisfied with my general knowledge.

Maybe it's a little too general.

Dogboy, you're my hero.

Awwe. Thanks. Kill me with kindness why don't you.

Originally Posted by Tu-160

I met a sentence

By the way, this is not an expression a native speaker would use. You can meet people and you can meet with difficulties, but you can't really meet a sentence. Typically, you'd idomatically say something like:

I came across this senence
I ran into this sentence

or just,

I noticed this sentence.

Just wanted to tell that I've read the post above. Thanks TexasMark, I will consider it in the future.

You just wanted to say, that is. Greubau has the same problem, I'm afraid.