The modern government performance management movement is more than two decades old and is still gaining momentum. Despite criticism from practitioners and academicians, performance management will continue to be a key management tool for government in the decades to come. Public management scholars face the challenge of better understanding the evolution, dynamics, and effects of performance management before making recommendations that are evidence-based, practically feasible, politically legitimate, and public-value enhancing. In order to do this, scholars must periodically and critically reflect on the previous literature: learning from its successes, identifying its weaknesses, and determining the big research questions for the future.
The Public Performance and Management section of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), in collaboration with the Public Performance Measurement and Reporting Network (PPMRN), organized a one-day workshop at the 2013 ASPA national conference in New Orleans. Rutgers University’s School of Public Affairs and Administration and Florida University’s Askew School of Public Administration and Policy co-sponsored the event. Prominent researchers and practitioners in the field of public performance management were invited, as stated in the call-for-participation, to “critically review the existing knowledge base, demonstrate the frontier of theorizing and praxis, and deliberate on the future of performance scholarship and reform.”
Workshop attendees were invited to submit proposals to address one or more of the following four issues, which we consider important in advancing performance management research and practice:
Theory. Theory and theorizing in performance management research addresses such questions as: What is the quality of theorizing in the current research? Are we building on past theoretical work in this field, or are we unaware of the large body of such research dating back decades? Are we aware of and utilizing parallel research from Europe and other regions? Do we have strong theories of performance management? What would a good theory of performance management require? What is the relationship between performance theory and practice? How does performance measurement research relate to other public administration and political science theories? What are the most important concerns in developing future theories? Alternatively, one can also propose a formal theory of performance measurement or its aspects.
Practice. From an international perspective, the cutting-age practices include case studies that address questions such as: What are the best-performing governments doing with performance management? Are they informed by theory? How has performance practice been shaped by distinctive institutions of the government? How do best-practice governments deal with resource and budget issues in implementing performance management? How do they deal with motivational and political issues? How can we make the practice sustainable in a shifting political environment? Are we continually revisiting problems of performance without making salient progress? What are the critical questions that have been solved in practice?
Methods. The methods issue in the research and practice of performance management includes but is not limited to issues such as: What are the methodological problems in current performance research? How can we strengthen its research design? How can alternative or more advanced social science methods and techniques be used in performance research to address important theoretical questions? How are qualitative methods useful? How can we improve the validity of evidence in performance practice?
Technology. This panel deals with the use of technology in performance management, covering issues such as: What are the performance management software options being used by government and nonprofit organizations? How are they using other technologies? Why do some organizations use technology heavily and others not? How has the development of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) affected performance management? Can social media be used to transform performance management? How do institutions moderate the effects of technology on performance management? Does the use of technology improve the effectiveness of performance management?
We received many proposals, among which 23 were invited for presentation, covering all of the four issues presented above. Seven of these manuscripts are included in this symposium (although none of them particularly addresses the issue of technology). In this introduction, we briefly introduce the seven articles and offer some general observations about them.
Four of the seven articles can be classified as addressing the issue of theory or theorizing. Two of them, one by Alexander Kroll and the other by Elaine Yi Lu, Zachary Mohr, and Alfred Tat-Kei Ho, deal with what is perhaps the first step of theorizing—asking the right questions. Both articles include systematic review of the literature and offer suggestions for future research. Kroll focuses on drivers of performance information use, analyzing 25 recently published empirical studies. He identifies six important drivers of performance data use: measurement system maturity, stakeholder involvement, leadership support, support capacity, an innovation culture, and goal clarity. He also identifies some promising impact factors that require further validation: learning forums/routines, managers’ enthusiasm, managers’ prosocial motivation, managers’ networking behavior, political support, and fragmentation of the environment. Kroll offers five recommendations for future research on performance information use, but they are applicable to performance management research in general: (1) studying indirect (mediating) and contingency (moderating) effects; (2) attending to the characteristics of potential information users, such as their learning styles and role identities; (3) emphasizing the role of different information types, and particularly their interactions and relationships; (4) examining the connection of purposeful performance information use to actual performance improvement; and (5) relying more on experimental designs to ensure causality.
Lu, Mohr, and Ho have a different focus—performance budgeting, but their method and observations are consistent with Kroll’s. With a careful review of 61 articles published between 2002 and 2011 in major public administration and budgeting journals, Lu, Mohr, and Ho identify six categories of factors that influence the success of performance budgeting, including, in the order of importance: measurement-system quality, support for performance, investment and capacity, implementation approaches, (dis)incentives, and characteristics of implementation organizations. The top three categories are particularly consistent with Kroll’s findings regarding performance information use. Moreover, they argue, as does Kroll, that future research should use better research designs to establish causality, but they advocate for both more advanced quantitative analysis and more in-depth qualitative studies. Lu, Mohr, and Ho’s article offers seven recommendations for future research on performance budgeting: (1) better conceptualization of performance budgeting and its impact; (2) attention to the interrelationships among the variables important for performance budgeting; (3) contingency-based and institutionally sensitive approaches that emphasize the role of contextualization; (4) study at the program and activity levels; (5) examination of performance budgeting under new governance schemes; (6) method diversity; and (7) further exploration of the limits, boundaries, and unintended consequences of performance budgeting.
The preceding two articles provide excellent examples of how to advance theorizing via systematic literature review. The other two “theory” articles, by Jostein Askim and Mads Kristiansen respectively, do what Kroll, Lu et al., and the symposium editors advocate for developing and/or applying new theoretical frameworks for performance management. Kristiansen develops a historical institutionalism perspective of the evolution of management by objectives and results (MBOR) in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Instead of treating MBOR or performance regime as an ideal technique with clear boundaries, he sees it as an institutional choice that has various institutional configurations and is affected by path dependence and institutional context. Based on the institutional change literature, he differentiates four patterns of institutional change based on the process of change (gradual vs. abrupt) and the result of change (continuity vs. discontinuity), three scales of institutional change (first-order, second-order, and third-order), and different directions of institutional change, linking these concepts to MBOR. Kristiansen identifies three stages of MBOR evolution: from an emphasis on autonomy and a simple MBOR system in the 1980s, to more control and a more comprehensive MBOR system in the 1990s, and then back to more autonomy and a less comprehensive MBOR system in the 2000s. He observes great continuity in the MBOR institution, but he also points out the occurrence of first- and second-order changes via layering, conversion, and deinstitutionalization. Furthermore, he argues that the differences across the three countries regarding MBOR can be explained by their different political-administrative structures. In a literature that is dominated by functionalism, this institutional perspective is both fresh and insightful.
Like Kristiansen, Askim sees different “versions” of performance management and attempts to explain why government agencies would utilize one or another of them. Unlike Kristiansen, Askim believes that there is a “right version” and develops a framework of instruments of executive governance to explain the adoption of the right and wrong versions. The framework assumes that performance management is only one of a number of different sets of instruments that a ministry can employ to control agencies. Thus, there is an interaction between performance management and other instruments, such as fiscal, legal, and behavioral steering. Under this framework, three competing situations can occur. The layered situation means that ministries use performance management as an additional layer of control—to fill control gaps left by other instruments. The imbedded situation means that ministries use performance management as an assurance of autonomy—to reinforce intended levels of delegated autonomy along with other instruments. The disjointed situation means that ministries use performance management without considering its harmony with other instruments. Askim analyzes performance contracts between 77 Norwegian executive agencies and their parent ministries, treating input-oriented and process-oriented performance systems as the wrong version, and considering output-oriented and outcome-oriented systems as the right versions. He observes that the imbedding perspective does not apply in the Norwegian case and the layering perspective received some support, but he argues that overall the disjointed decision perspective tells the true story. Treating performance management as but one governance instrument and examining its interaction with other instruments is an interesting and valuable direction for future research.
One of the seven articles deals with the issue of practice. David Ammons and Dale J. Roenigk ask: To what extent is performance management practice in local government influenced by doctrine—i.e., widely accepted beliefs regarding conditions essential to successful performance management? Ammons and Roenigk select four elements of doctrine: develop better measurement systems in terms of scope, type of indicator, and organization-wide measures; use strategic planning to ensure goal clarity; balance executive oversight and devolved authority; and provide appropriate incentives and sanctions. They examine the presence of such practices in 66 U.S. cities/counties that are recognized for their performance management efforts. Their study finds doctrine to be a strong influence in the design of performance management systems, a modest influence in the use of strategic planning to anchor performance management, a mixed influence in balancing executive oversight and devolved authority, and a limited influence in the use of incentives and sanctions. Ammons and Roenigk call for more evidence-based study of the efficacy of doctrinal prescriptions.
The remaining two articles cover the area of methods. Carmine Bianchi and Daniel Williams apply system dynamics modeling to develop a cause-and-effect perspective to understand, prevent, detect, and counteract behavioral distortions associated with performance management. System dynamics modeling assumes that system process structure determines system behavior, which, in turn, determines organizational performance. In this approach, performance measurement is placed within the broader context of the system and affects the behaviors of the whole system. Bianchi and Williams argue that system dynamics is particularly useful in helping to map the unintended and dysfunctional behavior produced by improper use of performance measures, such as attribution error, goal displacement, suboptimization, selective attention, cheating, and gaming. They use the case of the implementation of the CompStat program at the New York Police Department to illustrate the application of such an approach. System dynamics is but one of the modeling strategies that have been applied in organizational research, and a viable future research area is to apply more of such strategies.
Burt Barnow and John Trutko address a basic methods issue: how to design appropriate efficiency measures. As we all know, efficiency is a core value of public administration, and measuring and comparing program efficiency is of great importance. However, measuring and comparing efficiency is no easy task. Using the example of employment and training programs, the authors illustrate that developing and using efficiency measures is more complex than might be expected and sometimes leads to perverse incentives. Barnow and Trutko identify seven challenges in designing efficiency measures that provide a fair comparison across programs.
Overall, the seven articles included in this symposium make a valuable contribution to the performance management literature. Although they do not touch on the role of technology, the possibility of other theoretical frameworks, the utility of other modeling strategies, and other compelling research questions, together they do suggest that the future of performance management research depends on better theorizing, better methods, and better theory-practice fit. Some particular lessons from the articles are:
We need a broader set of theoretical frameworks to understand performance management. Historical institutionalism is just one example.
We need better conceptualization of performance management—its types and variations, its potential users, its potential suppliers, and its potential uses.
We need more evidence-based research on the effects of performance management systems and conditions. This requires quantitative and qualitative designs that can establish causality.
We need a more contextualized understanding of performance management. Such contexts include national cultures and institutions, policy contexts, organizational contexts, and other mediating and moderating variables.
We need a more holistic and nuanced understanding of performance systems as part of a large system and as one of many governance instruments.
We need to appreciate the fact that performance management systems are not only a matter of design and adoption, but an issue of path dependence, power, and contingencies.
We need to understand performance management in new governance settings such as networks and public-private partnerships.
We need to pay particular attention to the unintended consequences of performance management and find a way to better deal with them.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Kaifeng Yang
Kaifeng Yang is a professor at the School of Public Administration and Policy, Renmin University of China and Florida State University. He is the editor of Public Performance & Management Review and his research interests include performance management, citizen participation, accountability, and organizational theory.
Marc Holzer
Marc Holzer (PhD University of Michigan) is Founding Dean of the School of Public Affairs and Administration and Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers University-Newark. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and of the World Academy of Productivity Science. Since 1975 Dr. Holzer has directed the National Center for Public Performance, and he is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the journals Public Performance and Management Review and Public Voices, and is the co-founder/co-editor of the Chinese Public Administration Review.