It can be said that the concept of performance of social systems is one of the most relevant, since all social systems - from the family, through the enterprise, to the Nation state - are only interesting in obtaining as high a performance as possible. The difficulties encountered when dealing with the concept of performance have been recognized and few books until now ventured to tackle the task, mainly because of the following three big problems: the lack of a theoretical-operational model; the lack of valid data; and the lack of computer facilities. Today these obstacles have been overcome...

According to many social thinkers it is not possible to quantify the performance of organizations on the basis of the values produced. One initial reply to this critique is that the axiological approach in systems theory aims to fulfil a dual function. On one side, it takes a whole set of universal reference values into consideration which in the end spur human motivation and action justifying life in society, among them the own survival of Homo sapiens which could be in danger today, On the other side, this book proposes to measure this axiological efficiency in operational statistical terms...