ABSTRACT
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, (economic) productivity means the effectiveness of productive effort, especially in industry, as measured in terms of the rate of output (e.g. goods, products, services) per unit of input (labour, materials, equipment etc.). In scientifi c literature, productivity is comparably defi ned as the relationship between output and input, between results and sacrifi ces (Aronoff and Kaplan, 1995). Output can relate to the number and quality of products or the operating result, for example expressed as the net profi t or market share. Input involves resources, i.e. production factors such as labour, capital, technology, information and facilities.
