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Integrated Performance
Confirmed by Evidence: GPAU’s Maturity Model in the Context of 75 Academic Frameworks
A 2025 review of 75 maturity models reveals consistent design patterns — and notable alignment with GPAU’s maturity model architecture.
Maturity models are used across industries to diagnose capability, identify gaps, and guide improvement. But how should a maturity model itself be designed? What level structure works best? What dimensions should it cover? How should it balance technological capability against organizational and human factors?
A 2025 study published in Sustainability by Reyes Domínguez, Infante Abreu, and Parv answers these questions empirically. The researchers reviewed 75 maturity models for industrial digital transformation, published between 2020 and 2024, analyzing their structural characteristics: level architecture, dimensional coverage, scoring approaches, and alignment with evolving industrial paradigms.
The study focuses on Industry 4.0 and 5.0 maturity in manufacturing and industrial contexts — a different domain from organizational performance management. We are not claiming the paper studied or validated GPAU’s model directly. What we observe is that the design patterns identified across 75 independent frameworks align closely with the architectural choices we have made in our Integrated Performance Management Maturity Model, particularly in version 3.0. These parallels suggest that the principles underlying credible maturity assessment are converging across domains.
The study’s most definitive structural finding: nearly half of the 75 models (49%) use a five-level maturity structure. The researchers interpret this as a balance between diagnostic precision and practical usability. The typical progression moves from an initial or ad hoc state, through managed and defined stages, to integrated and finally adaptive maturity. This preference is stable across the entire 2020–2024 period.
GPAU’s model uses the same five-level architecture: Initial, Emergent, Structured, Advanced, and Leading. The progression logic is consistent — from ad hoc practices through formalization and integration toward continuously evolving systems. The academic evidence confirms this is not an arbitrary design choice but the established standard in maturity assessment.
The study documents a clear temporal shift in what maturity models evaluate. Early models (2020) were predominantly techno-centric: focused on automation, digital infrastructure, and production systems. By 2021–2022, models became significantly more multi-dimensional, with increased inclusion of strategy, people, innovation, and organizational factors. The most common dimensions across 75 models are Technology and Digitalization (71%), Management and Strategy (51%), Processes and Operations (51%), and People and Competencies (45%).
GPAU’s model is multi-dimensional by design. Our five capabilities — Strategic Planning, Performance Measurement, Performance Improvement, Employee Performance Management, and Performance Culture — map directly to the dimensional patterns the study identifies as best practice: strategy, improvement processes, measurement, people, and organizational culture. The academic trend is away from single-domain assessment and toward systemic evaluation. Our model has been structured this way from the outset.
Sustainability appears in 13% of the 75 models reviewed — a minority, but one that has grown steadily since 2021 (it was entirely absent in 2020 models). The researchers link this emergence to the Industry 5.0 paradigm, which positions sustainability and resilience as structural layers built on top of the digital foundation of Industry 4.0. Their conclusion is explicit: future maturity models should integrate sustainability and resilience as formal dimensions, not peripheral considerations.
GPAU’s v3.0 model introduced sustainability integration within strategic planning assessment, formal risk-strategy linkage, and strategic resilience evaluation. These were design decisions made independently of this study. But the alignment is notable: the direction the academic literature now recommends is the direction our model has already taken.
People and Competencies is one of the fastest-growing dimensions in the study, rising sharply between 2020 and 2022. The researchers attribute this to a recognition that workforce capability and organizational culture are enabling conditions for maturity, not secondary to technology. Industry 5.0 frameworks position human-centricity as a structural pillar.
In most models reviewed, however, people and culture remain sub-dimensions — nested within broader categories. Few models treat them as independent assessment capabilities. This is where GPAU’s architecture is structurally distinct. Employee Performance Management and Performance Culture are separate, full-weight capabilities in our model. Version 3.0 further strengthened cultural assessment by increasing the influence of employee perception data. The academic trend is toward elevating people and culture. Our model already treats them as core pillars.
The study reveals that many maturity models are domain-specific: designed to assess digital readiness, smart manufacturing, or logistics transformation in isolation. Fewer attempt enterprise-wide assessment across interconnected capabilities. The researchers note a trend toward integration, but domain specificity remains the norm.
GPAU’s model is enterprise-wide by design. We assess the performance management system as a whole: the linkage between strategy and measurement, between measurement and improvement, between improvement and individual performance, and between all of these and the culture that sustains them. Cross-capability integration is a structural requirement of our model, not an aspiration. The academic literature’s movement toward integrated maturity assessment aligns with the architecture we apply.
A notable critique across the 75 models: many lack transparency in how scores are calculated, how dimensions are weighted, and how maturity levels are determined. The researchers call for transparent weighting and structured evaluation criteria as a design requirement. GPAU’s model uses defined weighting structures, documented maturity descriptors at each level for each capability, and a structured combination of assessor evaluation and stakeholder survey data. The academic evidence suggests this kind of scoring transparency is an exception the field needs more of.
This paper did not study GPAU’s model. It did not assess organizational performance management maturity. It reviewed the structural design of industrial maturity models. The parallels we draw are architectural, not empirical. The paper does not prove that our model produces better outcomes. It demonstrates that the design principles underlying our model — five-level staging, multi-dimensional scope, sustainability and resilience integration, people and culture as core capabilities, scoring transparency, and cross-capability integration — are consistent with what academic research identifies as best practice in maturity model design.
For organizations evaluating which maturity model to use, this kind of structural cross-referencing matters. A model that operates on principles confirmed across 75 independent frameworks is more defensible than one that does not. For organizations in the GCC and broader Middle East, where institutional performance maturity is tied to national strategy objectives including Vision 2030, the maturity model used to assess readiness must itself reflect the current state of the art.
Organizations seeking to evaluate their performance management maturity against a model that reflects these design principles can engage with the Global Performance Audit Unit for an independent assessment.
Reference: Reyes Domínguez, D.; Infante Abreu, M.B.; Parv, A.L. Evolution and Key Differences in Maturity Models for Industrial Digital Transformation: Focus on Industry 4.0 and 5.0. Sustainability 2025, 17, 11042. https://doi.org/10.3390/su172411042
