Research opportunities in performance measurement in public utilities regulation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a method to choose a set of scientific articles about performance measurement in public utilities regulation. The method is designed to identify references with high academic relevance in databases accessed via the internet, and, through these articles, to perform a mapping of these publications and conduct a systemic analysis. Design/methodology/approach – The study is characterized as exploratory and descriptive with a qualitative and quantitative approach. Incorporates an inductive logic, and draws on primary and secondary data sources. The research involves the application of a technical procedure for selection and study of selected articles. To this end, the process selected was the Knowledge Development Process – Constructivist (ProKnow-C). Findings – The result was a set of 16 renowned scientific articles and, for these papers, the main periodicals, papers, authors and keywords of the topic stood out. The content analysis allowed the identification of highlights and opportunities for future research. Originality/value – The originality of the paper lies in presenting a structured process for identifying relevant academic articles relating to the research context and, for these articles, find prominences and opportunities for a research theme without similar papers.