Beyond Performance Management: A Networked Production Model of Public Service Delivery

ABSTRACT

The use of outcome-based performance management as a means of coordinating and monitoring the production of decentralized public services has been growing. At the same time, it has been associated with significant problems, notably difficulty in controlling opportunistic behavior. However, alternative service delivery models based on open collaboration and coproduction, which can control opportunism, require initial trust between partners, and are often vulnerable to corruption, complacency, and rent-seeking. Thus, open collaboration models appear to need additional mechanisms that would promote trust building between partners even where trust is initially low, together with ensuring accountability and reducing opportunism. Based on a review of the recent business literature on networked production, the paper puts forward a service delivery model based on benchmarking, iterative planning and design, and error detection and correction mechanisms.

KEYWORDS:

• business and public policy
• organizational theory and behavior
• performance management
• public management

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Fred Block, Randall Eberts, Ron D’Amico, Jill Leufgen, and Kristin Wolff for their comments and suggestions. An earlier version of this article was presented at the fall 2012 conference of the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) held in Baltimore, MD.

Notes

WIOA introduced a few important changes to the WIA performance system. Thus, WIOA introduced business performance measures that monitor success in collaborating with employers. In addition, WIOA replaced retention in employment (which measured whether clients who were employed in the first quarter after program exit were also employed during the second and third quarter) with employment at four quarters after exit.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marian Negoita

Marian Negoita is a Senior Associate at Social Policy Research Associates, a research and evaluation organization based in Oakland, California. His research interests include public-private collaborations in governance, innovation policy, industrial upgrading, international comparative development, market and network failures, decentralization in public administration, and human capital policies. His work has been published in several journals including Socio-Economic Review, Politics and Society, Studies in Comparative International Development, and Regulation & Governance.