Hi Wayne.
I'll try and help you with a little insight here, without doing myself out of a job
This depends entirely on the engine and the ECU fitted. The maps on say a Siemens ECU and the way they are laid out is different from say the Bosch ECU that'll be fitted to your car. There are of course fundamental differences in maps between Petrol and Diesel given the Diesel is controlled by volume of fuel injected (mg/stroke) as the Diesel has no throttle.
In case of a Diesel... you'll find multiple different maps are considered before for the overall fuel injection quantity, start of injection etc are finally decided upon.
At the simplest level a Bosch EDC16 ECU has a 'drivers wish' map. This has RPM down one side, and engine load down the other side. These will normally step in say 500rpm and 8% load increments and the ECU will interpolate between the pre-set values. It can then determine when you request a load of 38% at 2000rpm that the fuel injected should be X mg/stroke.
This doesn't go into the engine though, its just the initial value suggested. It'll then go through a 'smoke limiter' map which will cap the fuel at different RPM based on quantity of air to stop you bellowing black smoke out. Beyond this there are torque limiters. Some are based on load vs revs, some on rpm alone. Some will be based on temperature etc. Again all of these are considered before arriving at the lowest value which doesn't violate any map. Remember all this is done per stroke so imaging the calculations your ECU is having to do at 4000rpm.
Obviously this is for injected quantity of fuel. There will be similar maps for Start of Injection (SOI) as to how many degrees of timing when the relevant decided IQ (Injected Quantity) will be started and of course from all this is needs to calculate from its duration calibration maps, how long the injector needs to stay open for - to achieve that IQ.
Of course (are you bored yet?)... the fuel rail pressure will also determine the IQ as higher pressures flow more fuel in the same amount of time. At higher RPM there won't be enough time to inject the fuel, before you find the flame is chasing the piston and producing no power - so the fuel pressure will increase with RPM (and there is a map for this too).
With a Turbo Diesel (You've now fell asleep haven't you?) there is also not a fixed quantity of air because the car is turbo charged. So now you've a series of boost maps to go through. There will be requested boost maps in the same way in fuel there was the drivers wish map, but again there will be absolute boost limiters (safety cut off if you like) which could be higher or lower than this. Wastgate Duty Cycle maps to help the car be able to achieve the boost its being asked to achieve. The ECU will of course make minor corrections on these, but it gives it a base to work from. You'll then have overall pressure limiter maps.
Economy vs Performance is about getting a better burn from the fuel. Building the boost earlier gives better cylinder charging which helps, and also releasing torque lower down allowing the driver to use taller gears (less rotational friction) is another factor... amongst many other things we've worked out, so we have a job
I hope that gives you some sort of insight as to whats going on