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Performance management remains a maturing and ever-evolving field of research and practice. This phenomenon is leading to the adoption of new performance management regimes in public administration and governance. In this regard, research has emphasized that implementing such innovative performance management regimes requires practicing "performance dialogue" through learning forums in boundary-crossing settings, also encompassing different organizations (Rajala et al., [44]; Bianchi, [10]). [Extracted from the article]

Research has demonstrated that certain drivers increase the probability of performance data use in local government. One performance driver that has received minimal attention is where the performance function is organizationally located, even though prior research has shown that the organizational placement of the performance function can potentially influence the design and use of performance measurement systems. Our study explores how the organizational placement of the performance function in local government influences key drivers of performance data use. We find evidence that performance functions located outside the budget office are more likely to promote the drivers of measurement system maturity, other management processes, and devolved decision‐making, which in turn increases the probability that local officials engage in performance data use. We also identify several research implications to advance the study and practice of performance management in local government and conclude with research limitations and suggestions for future research opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strategic planning has been increasingly used by local governments worldwide to boost performance. While this can be seen as a technical and political process, the relationship between managerial qualifications, political context and achievement of strategic goals in local governments has been scarcely studied. This study explores these relationships using data from 137 Colombian municipalities at the middle and end of the 2016–2019 mayoral term. Findings suggest that midterm strategic goal achievement is associated with mayoral experience, particularly in the national government where the tradition of strategic planning is better established, and this relationship increases with higher levels of municipal council support. Certain traits of the chief planning officer, appointed by the mayor, also correlate positively with midterm goal achievement. End‐term goal achievement is mainly associated with midterm paths. This research contributes to the performance management literature by highlighting the political‐managerial interplay in strategic goal achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interactive routines such as collaborative performance summits are thought to help collaborating organizations assess and improve their performance. However, there is little systematic evidence to substantiate this claim. This study leverages a longitudinal dataset to examine the summit process and identify the difference between summits that have an impact on performance and those that do not. The study explicates the assumed causal process and traces 18 partnerships as they prepare, conduct, and follow‐up a summit. The analysis provides evidence for the positive impact of summits, but also shows that the process unfolds differently than expected. Neither the range of performance issues that actors bring to the summit nor the intentions for change they formulate at the end of the meeting are key differentiators. The hallmark of impactful summits emerges to be a large share of participants gaining comprehensive insights. These findings have implications for collaborative performance management research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An ongoing tension exists in the relationship between performance regimes and equity. On the one hand, performance regimes could set goals to reduce disparate outcomes. However, performance regimes are associated with strategic behaviors, such as cream skimming, that could worsen outcomes for marginalized groups. This article contributes to this debate by examining the use of growth measures of performance on achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged subgroups of students in New York City public schools. Using a regression discontinuity design, this study credibly identifies the causal effects of performance signals on equity outcomes. Results show weak evidence of negative effects on equity, and the achievement gaps did not increase in most of the cases. The article also discusses how the incentives provided by growth measures can curb strategic behaviors. The findings provide measured optimism that the current generation of performance regimes can be designed to account for issues of equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To improve organizational performance, the doctrine of performance management states that managers need to be granted autonomy in exchange for accountability for results. However, managers are often held accountable without autonomy in practice. The accountability pressure often causes gaming behaviors. How does granting managerial autonomy in exchange for accountability affect gaming behaviors? To address this question, we investigated how a performance management reform in New York City public schools, the Empowerment Zone, affected two types of gaming behaviors: effort substitution and cream skimming. Utilizing a difference‐in‐differences estimation strategy over multiple periods, we find that the Empowerment Zone experiment mitigates effort substitution and cream skimming in public schools, but the effect is modified by organizational resources. The findings show the potential of fully implementing performance management doctrine in mitigating gaming and suggest that human resources are crucial for realizing the potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops the concept of the "public service ecosystem" across four levels—the institutional, service, individual, and beliefs levels. It does this by integrating service management and marketing theory with public administration and management theory. Consequently, it explores both the dimensions of value and value creation within the public service ecosystem at each level, and the interactions and inter‐relationships across these levels. It concludes with the key implications for public administration and management theory and pactice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the New Administration perspective was introduced by Dwight Waldo, equity has played a key role in public administration and public policy studies. Much research has focused on employment, politics, jurisprudence, voting and many other issues, while neglecting the role of public services. As gross societal inequities in the world still abound, this article aims at mapping the structure of the knowledge on equity in public services as well as the main conceptualizations and determinants of equity. Quantitative (bibliometrix) and qualitative (narrative) analyses are combined in the analysis of 145 articles from 69 journals. The greatest concentration areas and main drivers of equity (i.e., representative bureaucracy, administrative burden, horizontal and vertical decentralization, privatization, co‐production and performance management) are identified. The review contributes to the advancement of social equity in public administration scholarship and practice by improving the conceptual clarity of the term and by mapping the various literature streams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative governance is popular among practitioners and scholars, but getting a grip on the performance of collaborations remains a challenge. Recent research has made progress by identifying appropriate performance measures, yet managing performance also requires appropriate performance routines. This article brings together insights from collaborative governance and performance management to conceptualize collaborative performance regimes; the collection of routines used by actors working together on a societal issue to explicate their goals, exchange performance information, examine progress, and explore performance improvement actions. The concept of regimes is made concrete by focusing on the specific routine of organizing a collaborative performance summit; a periodic gathering where partners review their joint performance. Such summits are both manifestations of the performance regime and potential turning points for regime change. Using three local public health collaborations as illustration, this article offers a framework for understanding collaborative performance regimes, summits, and the dynamics between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presidents are claimed to have a stronger interest in an effective bureaucracy than Congress because they must be responsive to the public as a whole rather than narrow interests. We examine this claim in the context of multiple waves of U.S. performance management reforms: the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993, the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) (2002–2008), and the GPRA Modernization Act (GPRAMA) of 2010. Using four waves of federal employee surveys spanning 17 years, we measure reform success as employees' purposeful use of performance data as a result of being exposed to routines embedded in the reforms. We find that the legislative‐led GPRAMA is associated with more purposeful data use on aggregate while the PART executive reform succumbed to a partisan pattern of implementation. Statutory reforms are less likely to be experienced as ideological tools than executive branch reforms used by the president to impose control over agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments around the world have implemented reforms to reduce red tape, but little evidence exists about whether they have achieved their goals. Utilizing a quasi‐experimental regression discontinuity design, this research examines the impact of a policy implemented by the Korean central government to reduce local levels of regulatory red tape. The findings show, first, that the centrally designed reform significantly reduced local levels of red tape, but the reduction occurred only among low‐performing localities. This supports the claim that organizations' responses to positive and negative performance information are asymmetric—the negativity bias hypothesis. This finding is explained by the bounded rationality view of organizational decision‐making. Second, the impact was clearest among localities with high fiscal dependence on the central government. This supports the resource dependence hypothesis, which postulates that a policy's impact depends on the power imbalance between localities and the central government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public performance regimes are bedeviled by a paradox: they must engage the specialized knowledge of professionals who often perceive those very regimes as a threat to their autonomy. The authors use a mixed‐method analysis of performance management in Danish hospitals, with separate data for managers and frontline professionals, to offer two insights into this challenge. First, the study shows that managerial behavior—in the form of performance information use—matters to the way frontline professionals engage in goal‐based learning. Second, it shows that the way managers use performance data matters. When managers use data in ways that reinforce the perception of performance management as an externally imposed tool of control, professionals withdraw effort. However, when managers use data in ways that solve organizational problems, professionals engage in goal‐based learning. The threat to professional values that performance regimes pose can therefore be mitigated by managers using data in ways that complements those values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As public sector work environments continue to embrace the digital governance revolution, questions of work surveillance practices and its relationship to performance management continue to evolve, but even more dramatically in the contemporary period of many public servants being forced to shift to remote work from home in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic. This article presents the results of three surveys, two of them population‐based survey experiments, all conducted during the onset of the COVID‐19 pandemic in Canada that compare public servant (n = 346) and citizen (n = 1,008 phone; n = 2,001 web) attitudes to various cutting‐edge—though no doubt controversial among some—digital surveillance tools that can be used in the public sector to monitor employee work patterns, often targeted toward remote working conditions. The findings represent data that can help governments and public service associations navigate difficult questions of reasonable privacy intrusions in an increasing digitally connected workforce. Evidence for Practice: New work surveillance technologies are available to use within the public sector and will present acceptability challenges to public managers as they contemplate the introduction of these technologies.Multimodal survey data from Canada reveals that public servants and citizens find these emerging work surveillance technologies to be quite intrusive and unreasonable but show relatively more tolerance for digital surveillance over physical surveillance practices.Understanding surveillance anxieties among targeted employees will be key to finding a balance between employee privacy rights and employer desires to manage employees in a remote or digital environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance management in government is at a crossroads. The advent of big data and advances in technological and analytical tools have provided opportunities to measure and track a wider variety of internal and external indicators on a more timely basis. Public leaders require new vision and capacity to design and manage knowledge‐building systems. This article provides two tools: (1) a more comprehensive open systems performance management framework and (2) a model of leadership needed to orchestrate such systems—knowledge brokers who orchestrate the demand for and supply of evidence. This article recommends that public agencies strategically build evidence to better track measures of the effects of governmental actions on public value and their intended and unintended consequences on the ecosystem; articulate, measure, and test the assumptions built into their operating models; and learn from routine monitoring of the dynamic environment in which their organizations strive to achieve their missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance management has been a focus of scholars and practitioners for more than 25 years, yet the use of performance information has not greatly expanded as a result of this attention. Acknowledging that performance measurement is not an end in itself but rather a means to enhance focus on results and value, this article evaluates the determinants of the use of performance information by local government administrators. An online survey was administered to local government employees involved in the 2015–16 Florida Benchmarking Consortium. Analysis of the data demonstrates that institutionalization of performance measurement has the strongest statistically significant positive association with the use of performance information, followed by the design adequacy of the performance measurement system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As performance management systems gain popularity in police agencies, they are increasingly being criticized for their ineffectiveness at reducing crime and for encouraging abuse of authority. Scholars and practitioners, however, argue that these systems can be effective if they are implemented properly with the use of best practices. This article contributes to this debate by evaluating the impact of performance management systems and associated best practices on improving police performance. An analysis of primary survey data of 308 U.S. police agencies shows that performance management systems are effective tools in helping reduce crime across almost all crime categories. However, the best practices of performance reporting to citizens and providing discretion to officers have no significant impact on crime reduction, while consulting officers in the target‐setting process has a negative impact on police performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, governments have invested in the creation of two forms of knowledge production about government performance: program evaluations and performance management. Prior research has noted tensions between these two approaches and the potential for complementarities when they are aligned. This article offers empirical evidence on how program evaluations connect with performance management in the U.S. federal government in 2000 and 2013. In the later time period, there is an interactive effect between the two approaches, which, the authors argue, reflects deliberate efforts by the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations to build closer connections between program evaluation and performance management. Drawing on the 2013 data, the authors offer evidence that how evaluations are implemented matters and that evaluations facilitate performance information use by reducing the causal uncertainty that managers face as they try to make sense of what performance data mean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the increasing stress on performance in public sector organizations, there is still little empirical evidence on whether—and if so, how—politicians respond to performance information. This article addresses this research gap by linking registry statistics on school performance in Norway's 428 municipalities with data from an information experiment embedded in a survey of local politicians. Findings show that school performance bears only a weak relationship to politicians' preferences for resource‐related reforms, but it strongly affects preferences for governance‐related reforms, indicating the importance of accounting for heterogeneity across alternative types of (school) reforms. Moreover, local politicians are, on average, well informed about school performance. This reflects the force of local inhabitants' high information level on politicians' accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the last two decades, performance management theories and practices have focused on outcome-oriented management but have paid little attention to the role of public communication. Using multiple large data sets from Kansas City, Missouri, for 2009-14, this research suggests that the perceived effectiveness of public communication has a more substantial impact on public satisfaction with police protection and crime prevention than neighborhood crime rates and broken windows factors and that perceived effectiveness moderates the negative impact of crime rates. After controlling for residents' demographic characteristics, the authors find that the perceived effectiveness of communication is associated with public satisfaction with the content and quality of the city website and the government television channel. The implications for public safety management and police-citizen relations as well as directions for future research on public communication strategies and public performance management are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance in public organizations is a key concept that requires clarification. Based on a conceptual review of research published in 10 public administration journals, this article proposes six distinctions to describe the systematic differences in performance criteria: From which stakeholder's perspective is performance being assessed? Are the criteria formal or informal? Are the criteria subjective? Which process focus and product focus do they have, if any? What is the unit of analysis? Based on these distinctions, the performance criteria of existing studies used in an empirical review of management and performance are classified. The results illustrate how a systematization of the conceptual space of performance in public organizations can help researchers select what to study and what to leave out with greater accuracy while also bringing greater clarity to public debates about performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid advances in our ability to collect, analyze, and disseminate information are transforming public administration. This 'big data' revolution presents opportunities for improving the management of public programs, but it also entails some risks. In addition to potentially magnifying well-known problems with public sector performance management-particularly the problem of goal displacement-the widespread dissemination of administrative data and performance information increasingly enables external political actors to peer into and evaluate the administration of public programs. The latter trend is consequential because external actors may have little sense of the validity of performance metrics and little understanding of the policy priorities they capture. The author illustrates these potential problems using recent research on U.S. primary and secondary education and suggests that public administration scholars could help improve governance in the data-rich future by informing the development and dissemination of organizational report cards that better capture the value that public agencies deliver. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What makes a well-functioning governmental crisis management system, and how can this be studied using an organization theory-based approach? A core argument is that such a system needs both governance capacity and governance legitimacy. Organizational arrangements as well as the legitimacy of government authorities will affect crisis management performance. A central argument is that both structural features and cultural context matter, as does the nature of the crisis. Is it a transboundary crisis? How unique is it, and how much uncertainty is associated with it? The arguments are substantiated with empirical examples and supported by a literature synthesis, focusing on public administration research. A main conclusion is that there is no optimal formula for harmonizing competing interests and tensions or for overcoming uncertainty and ambiguous government structures. Flexibility and adaptation are key assets, which are constrained by the political, administrative, and situational context. Furthermore, a future research agenda is indicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public value creation has become a critical challenge, but existing approaches have limitations and it is unclear how they can be integrated. This article addresses this issue by analyzing four best-practice cases in which public value was created through the integration of community indicators and government performance management. It identifies an iterative process of participation, legitimation, and implementation, with institutional innovations across boundaries between civil society, politics, and administration. These institutional innovations help integrate the often fragmented arenas of participation, legitimation, and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The doctrine of performance management has been promoted as an alternative to rule-based governance. Analyzing performance management as a system of rules, this article examines how performance management is adopted through rules. The question is examined based on a systematic counting and content coding of national rules within the domain of primary education in Denmark from 1989 to 2010. Contrary to the prescriptions of the performance management doctrine, the analysis shows a clear increase in the number of rules. This reflects the creation of many new rules about performance measurement without a proportionate repeal of production rules constraining the autonomy of public service providers and their managers. The result is congruent with the expectations derived from the literature on rule dynamics, which emphasizes rules as the carriers of learning and interests. The article thereby demonstrates the utility of analyzing performance management as a system of rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media, politicians, and reform proponents frequently assert that public sector organizations are inefficient and burdened by administrative procedures. But are negative stereotypes of the public sector reflected in people's perceptions of public service provision? Given the methodological challenges of isolating the perception of publicness from other factors related to public organizations, little is known about whether public organizations have a negative image. The authors use a survey experimental design to isolate the effect of publicness on perceptions of the performance of hospitals. The results suggest that public sector organizations have a negative image on productivity-related aspects of performance but not on normative aspects of performance. As this article is a randomized experiment, it provides strong evidence regarding the causal nature of the relationship between publicness and perceptions of performance. Implications for researchers aiming to understand these mechanisms and for public managers concerned about the image of their organization are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance-based management is pervasive in public organizations; countless governments have implemented performance management systems with the hope that they will improve organizational effectiveness. However, there has been little comprehensive review of their impact. This article conducts a meta-analysis on the impact of performance management on performance in public organizations. It contributes to the current literature in three ways. First, it examines the effect of the 'average' performance management system. Second, it examines the influence of management: whether beneficial performance management practices moderate the average effect. Third, it examines the effect of 'time' on performance management. Using 2,188 effects from 49 studies, the analysis finds that performance management has a small average effect. However, the effect is substantially larger when indicators of best practices in high-quality studies are included, indicating that management practices have an important impact on the effectiveness of performance management systems. Evidence for the effect of time is mixed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance management systems have become a key component of contemporary public administration. However, there has been only limited analysis of the social construction of performance by public managers who are subject to them. This article examines the ways in which public managers create, maintain, and disrupt performance management practices. The authors find that managers make external performance assessments perform for themselves by constantly negotiating boundaries in ways that combine bureaucratic and managerial rationales. The authors argue that the ways in which organizational boundaries are constructed are fundamental to understanding the success or failure of performance management systems and the transformation of managerial ways of thinking about performance into a logic of improvement through which contemporary public sector reforms become embedded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As performance-based mechanisms for accountability have become increasingly commonplace in the public sector, it is apparent that administrative reactions to these reforms are central in determining their effectiveness. Unfortunately, we know relatively little about the factors that drive acceptance of performance-based accountability by administrative actors. This article employs data collected from an original survey instrument to examine the perceptions of presidents at American public colleges and universities regarding performance funding. The author finds that acceptance of performance as a basis for funding is driven by a variety of factors, including the partisanship of the state legislature, organizational performance (measured by institutional graduation rates), dysfunction in the external information environment, and the political ideology of university presidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although performance management processes are widely assumed to be beneficial in improving organizational performance in the public sector, there is insufficient empirical evidence to back this claim. In this article, the authors examine the impact of performance management practices on organizational effectiveness in a particular segment of the public transit industry in the United States. The analysis utilizes original survey data on performance management practices comprising both strategy formulation and performance measurement in 88 small and medium-sized local transit agencies in conjunction with comparative outcome data drawn from the National Transit Database maintained by the Federal Transit Administration. The results provide evidence that more extensive use of performance management practices does in fact contribute to increased effectiveness in this segment of the transit industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The backbone of theory of the market-based approach New Public Management is that market orientation improves public service performance. In this article, market orientation is operationalized through the dominant theoretical framework in the business literature: competitor orientation, customer orientation, and interfunctional coordination. Market orientation is examined from the vantage point of three stakeholder groups in English local government: citizens, public servants, and the central government's agent, the Audit Commission. Findings show that market orientation works best for enhancing citizen satisfaction with local services, but its impacts on the performance judgments of local managers or the Audit Commission are negligible. The conclusion discusses important implications of these findings for research, policy, and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which discusses the performance management elements of public administration. Performance management is a metric used for ensuring effectiveness which has been praised around the world, particularly in the U.S. The technology that will enhance data accessibility, the cost of services, and the inclusion of citizens due to this metric are all discussed.

Can public sector organizations increase productivity through competition in spite of inherent limitations, such as budget constraints? This study addresses that question by examining the impact of four factors that contribute to employees’ expectations regarding competitive work environments on organizational performance in terms of overall quality of work and client satisfaction. The four factors measured include rewards for merit such as salary and benefits, opportunities, organizational rules, and the capacity to deal with risks as perceived by employees. Using data on public and nonprofit sector employees, expectations for merit rewards were positively related to employees’ perception of organizational performance when the conditions of performance-based organizational rules and risk-taking behaviors were also satisfied. Moreover, employees’ perceptions of organizational performance tended to increase when they felt that organizational rules were oriented toward performance plus organizational members and top leaders exhibited greater risk-taking behaviors. However, no correlation was evident between employees’ expectations of opportunities and perceived organizational performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration instituted a Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution System (PPBES) in 2002. As supplemented by matrix management, PPBES was appealing as an effort to rationalize the performance of an agency with an especially high degree of functional overlap among its component parts. Although PPBES has had some salutary effects, the agency's experience to date consistent with accounts of the difficulties that led to the abandonment of program budgeting by the civilian bureaucracy almost 40 years ago. As such, it speaks to the limits of performance assessment as a means of reallocating resources and responsibilities across organizational boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Winter Commission’s aspirations for improvement of governance at the state and local level resulted in proposals to modernize public institutions and systems to remove the barriers on executive and managerial authority to act. Improving government performance and accountability to citizens requires leadership to empower employees by reducing rules, increasing discretion, and rewarding innovation. The performance measurement movement and its related performance management movement are public management trends of wide influence in state and local government that are both an adjunct to, and a reflection of those aspirations. Case studies of cities that have sought to develop and use performance measurement and engage citizens demonstrate great potential to improve governance and manage for results that citizens want. But even exemplary jurisdictions face challenges using evidence-based, data-driven performance management approaches. Promoting best practice requires better scholarship to understand the determinants of successful implementation, adoption, and use of performance measurement. The outcomes of performance management systems are generally unmeasured and little is known about their cost effectiveness or endurance over time. The promise is there, but our expectations should be tempered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of communication in public administration has been emphasized over time in public administration theory. Nonetheless, communication—with the exception of political communication—has been neglected in scholarship. Garnett’s performance predicament posits the difficulty of showing linkages between communication and performance. This paper explores the role that communication plays in achieving organizational performance through a review of research that bears on communication’s direct and indirect influences on performance. The primary thrust is communication’s indirect role in achieving performance by mediating or moderating the effects of organizational culture on performance, thereby adding another perspective on the culture–performance relationship. Adapting the typology of Zammuto and Krakower, two types of organizational culture—rule-oriented culture and mission-oriented culture—are examined to explore how the relationship between organizational culture and organizational performance is influenced by communication. The analysis supports the claim that communication acts as a meta-mechanism for shaping and imparting culture in mission-oriented organizational cultures, thereby influencing performance. In particular, task orientation, feedback, and upward communication have positive effects on perceived organizational performance in mission-oriented organizations but potentially negative effects on performance in rule-oriented cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The management literature argues that legislative involvement is important to the implementation of performance management reform, but it does not specify how legislatures should be engaged or how different legislative organizational arrangements affect reform. This article blends theories of management and legislative professionalism to better understand the influence of legislatures on the implementation of management reform. Drawing on data from several surveys, it examines the influence of legislative organization on the managerial use of performance measures. The findings suggest that citizen legislatures are associated with better administrative practices than professional legislatures and that the quality of legislative involvement may be more important than its quantity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research on government performance measurement has been largely descriptive and prescriptive, with only limited attention paid to hypothesis testing and middle-range theory construction. Although researchers have made prescriptions about how to make performance management work, the validity of those prescriptions has not been systematically examined. In particular, the role of the external political environment and stakeholder participation, two important factors for public sector management, remains unclear. Based on survey data, this article uses structural equation modeling to test a model that assesses how political environment, stakeholder participation, organizational support, and training affect the adoption and managerial effectiveness of performance management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Treating all respondents to citizen satisfaction surveys as “customers” risks misinterpreting the findings and misguiding managerial decision making. Citizen evaluations of the quality of public services are likely to vary based on whether citizens have a direct or indirect relationship to the service. Furthermore, citizens are likely to rate services differently based on whether they consume the services as a result of coercion or choice, although the quality of the interaction shapes the impact of the type of interaction. Based on a series of empirical analyses, this paper demonstrates that recipients who have superior-quality interactions with providers are likely to report high ratings for elective services, whereas citizens who have poor-quality interactions are likely to report low ratings for coercive services. In this way, the quality of the interaction influences citizens’ predispositions to rate services high or low based on whether they consume the service by choice or coercion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance management and citizen participation are being used by local governments to improve government accountability and responsiveness. In some cases, local governments are integrating these two trends. One area of local government in which this trend has not been assessed is special districts. This paper uses data from a study of nine special districts in the state of Texas to fill this void. To assess citizen participation in performance management among the districts, we interviewed district managers, analyzed minutes from governing board meetings, and conducted citizen focus groups in three regions of the state. Our findings suggest that although districts may not yet be in tune with the latest performance management trends, they are making efforts to engage citizens in other ways. We recommend ways that districts can build on these experiences and more effectively incorporate citizens in the development, analysis, and reporting of performance measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the link between government performance and citizen trust in government seems intuitive, the relationship is not supported in some of the literature. This article argues that the difficulty of empirically demonstrating this link is rooted in the difficulty of defining and measuring government performance meaningfully. Performance measurement can improve citizen trust in government directly through citizen participation in the evaluation process or indirectly by improving citizens’ perceptions of government performance. To achieve this potential, current performance-measurement practice must be improved: to measure what citizens really care about, to be more systematic and integrated across agencies, to include other governing entities, and to become an ongoing participatory process in which governments and citizens are both transformed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While attention has been paid to a few cities and counties exhibiting effective performance measurement systems, most U.S. local governments have been active in the development and use of performance measurement for several decades. This research examines the effects of performance-measurement information on budgetary decision making, communication, and other operations of U.S. local governments. Data are drawn from a national survey of city and county administrators and budgeters that included nearly 300 governments. Findings indicate the use of performance measurement by local departments is pervasive, although survey respondents are less enthusiastic about measurement effectiveness. Study results show subtle distinctions between city and county officials in their use of performance measurement for budgetary purposes and processes. Research findings indicate the consistent, active integration of measures throughout the budget process is important in determining real budget and communication effects in local governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government agencies are encouraged to adopt business practices to improve program performance. But there are significant differences between the private and public sectors, both in the nature of the commodities offered and the way people in decision-making roles maximize utility. These differences are likely to affect the success of such endeavors. We examine efforts by the Office of National Drug Control Policy to develop a National Drug Control Strategy. A theoretical model of performance-based management is developed within this context that allows us to identify tensions that are inherent in any system of this kind. Some basic methods for reducing tension are then discussed. Given the generality of the model, it is possible the observations offered here are relevant to other policy problems requiring multi-agency coordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All levels of government have begun to pursue results-based reforms, which assume that managers will use performance information to make better decisions. However, reforms have neglected the insights of a large and relevant literature on organizational learning. This article revisits this literature, treating results-based reform as an organizational learning mechanism and a deliberate structural effort to induce learning. From an organizational learning perspective, most results-based reforms target narrow process improvement (single-loop learning) rather than a broad understanding of policy choices and effectiveness (double-loop learning), even though the latter is more critical for long-term organizational success. Case evidence from state governments illustrates single- and double-loop learning and the importance of two frequently neglected aspects of organizational learning: learning forums—routines where performance information is deliberately examined—and the role of organizational culture in enabling or limiting learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]