Performance movement at a crossroads: information, accountability and learning

Abstract

Public managers all over the world have sought to strengthen governmental operations by establishing performance measurement regimes. Ironically, the apparent success of the performance regimes may have helped ensure agency compliance with measurement requirements at the expense of real improvements in performance. Here we suggest that at least one of the reasons for this may be that the characteristics of performance management instituted by many central government policymakers -- public transparency and the use of performance metrics for making high stakes budgetary and personnel decisions -- may serve to inhibit the learning potential of performance information. How this occurs and what might be done to at least partially reconcile the performance agenda of elected officials and agency learning are the subjects of this paper.

Keywords:

• performance management
• organizational learning
• accountability