Techniques and paradoxes in performing performance measurements: concluding reflections

ABSTRACT

Performance measurement has an implicit performance theory embedded within its practice; performance measurement perforce performs. Performance measurement has a performative effect on performance. Drawing together and building on the various empirical observations from the preceding papers in this collection, this concluding paper firstly examines the circumstances in which performance measurement performs, that is, when it produces ‘authentic’ performance improvements, compared to when performance measurements misfire. The paper secondly explores several paradoxes of performance measurement – such that performance measurement measures only part of the performance it seeks to be performative on, incentives to perform incentivise poor performance and so on. These paradoxes, contradictions and ironies must be apprehended and appreciated in discovering, discerning and deciphering the diverse dynamics of measuring performance. They also demonstrate that analysing and working with performance measurement requires a perspective that eschews absolutes and clear directions, and embraces the uneasy and potentially destabilising tension of Escher’s performative art.

KEYWORDS:

• Performance measurement
• performance paradox
• sociology of methods
• policy instrument
• governance

Acknowledgements

The feedback from reviewers and from workshop participants who heard an earlier presentation of this paper is gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Paul Henman is Associate Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Queensland. His previous book was Governing electronically: e-Government and the reconfiguration of public administration, policy and power (Palgrave).

ORCID details

Paul Henman http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9923-6587

Notes

1. The purpose here is similar to that of Hood (2012) who argues that performance is enhanced consequent to the form of performance governance (targets, rankings or intelligence) and the culture in which performance governance takes place (hierarchist, individualist, egalitarian and fatalism). There are some important synergies and departures in what we each cover.

Additional information

Funding

This paper is based on research conducted with the support of an Australian Research Council Discovery Project [grant number DP110100803].