Performance Dashboards and Data-Driven Decision-Making in Operations Management: A Conceptual Framework for Leadership Visibility

The binding constraint for operations leaders in 2024 is no longer the availability of data but the availability of attention, interpretation and authority. Enterprise systems, telematics, clinical systems, grid sensors and safety databases generate signals continuously, yet many executives still learn about material problems through escalation rather than observation. This paper develops a conceptual model linking performance dashboards to data-driven decision-making through an intermediate construct, leadership visibility, defined as the degree to which those accountable for an operating system hold a timely, accurate, shared and actionable representation of its state, its trajectory and its constraints. Dashboards improve decisions only insofar as they convert dispersed data into leadership visibility, and only insofar as the organization is structured so that what becomes visible can be acted upon by those who see it. The model specifies five layers, three dimensions of visibility, and contingency conditions including data quality, design quality, analytics capability, decision rights and environmental dynamism. It is built through an integrative synthesis of applied sources coded into six thematic streams, and advances fourteen propositions, a diagnostic logic based on a weakest-link property, and a research agenda.