Performance Regimes—The Institutional Context of Performance Policies

Abstract

Performance measurement, targeting, reporting and managing of public services has spread across jurisdictions in recent years. The most usual stance adopted by governments in developing performance policies has been shaped by principal-agent theory and a hierarchy of principal-agent relationships from core executive to service delivery. Such notions have been challenged from several directions, both in theory and empirically. Writers on accountability and those analyzing the “audit explosion” and the growth of “regulation inside government” have pointed to the way in which multiple actors and accountabilities have grown. Drawing on these and other sources this article develops a “performance regimes” perspective that offers a heuristic analytical framework of the main groups of institutional actors who can (but do not always) attempt to shape or steer the performance of service delivery agencies. The aim is to create a framework that can be applied comparatively to study changes in total performance regimes over time and between jurisdictions and sectors.

Keywords:

• performance
• organizational performance
• institutional context
• performance policies
• accountability

The author wishes to thank the UK National Audit Office and the UK ESRC (Public Services Programme RES-153-27-0013) for financial support that partly made this work possible.

Notes

55. Treasury Committee, Spending Review 2002 Minutes of Evidence 17 July and 18 July 2002, in Andrew Dilnot, David Walton, Prof. Colin Talbot, Nicholas Macpherson (HMT), Adam Sharples (HMT), Gordon Brown (Chanecellor), Ed Balls (HMT). 2002, House of Commons: London.

83. We should stress that some economists have moved beyond simplistic principal-agent models, and even the latter have something to offer. It is rather the simplistic interpretation of principal-agent models found in policy prescriptions which is being criticized.