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The importance of salesforce compensation systems is widely recognized, but many questions remain regarding what makes them effective. This article considers compensation systems within a broader performance management framework. The framework includes designing compensation systems, setting goals, evaluating performance, and providing rewards, as well as the associated justice perceptions and affective responses that ultimately link the process to retention/turnover patterns. Agency theory is used as a guide for compensation design. The proposed framework is aimed at considering not only issues of salesforce performance, but also who stays and leaves. Retention patterns over time ultimately determine the productive capacity of salesforce and warrant special sales management attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EPAStat is the first PerformanceStat system to be used at the agency level in the federal government. A short history of agency-level performance management systems compares EPAStat to its precursors at the Environmental Protection Agency. This study examines the development of EPAStat, particularly the measures used in its quarterly reporting system. The process behind measures selection is described and analyzed from the perspective of the principals, as are lessons learned. While there are common challenges and lessons learned among participants, there are clear differences between the headquarters offices and the regional offices in terms of how measures were selected, the types of metrics chosen, and the perceived worth of EPAStat as an agency-wide performance management system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance measurement has been lauded as a tool that would increase managerial discretion while ensuring accountability to stakeholders. The challenges of developing such a system that can accomplish both ends have been more difficult than originally conceived. Typically, performance measurement systems lack sophisticated measures, limiting their use for purposes of improved productivity. Managers are expected to increase performance by utilizing insufficient measures. This paper discusses some of the challenges that remain in developing a performance measurement system that may serve both purposes—improved performance and accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotional labor-that is, work that requires public employees to be emotionally engaged with citizens-is an emerging issue on the performance front. By examining a state agency whose primary goal is to resolve consumer complaints, this paper analyzes the conditions under which emotional labor influences three work outcomes that affect performance: job satisfaction, pride in work, and burnout. Results indicate that the performance of emotional labor is self-motivating and contributes to pride in work and to job satisfaction, just as it does in more emotionally intense jobs such as emergency services and law enforcement. We conclude that managing affect is central to program success whenever workers must interact with citizens, regardless of the emotional intensity of the work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a national mail survey of chief executives in mid-sized U.S. cities (populations between 25,000 and 250,000), this study examines the patterns of adoption, use, and impacts of performance measures for the purpose of advancing understanding of the challenges involved in moving from performance measurement to performance management. This study identifies the factors that distinguish cities that adopted and used performance measures and the results that chief executives expected to derive from the use of performance measures. What chief executives thought about the helpfulness of performance measures in making various types of decisions and why they thought their use of performance measures met, fell short, or exceeded their expectations are examined. The study finds that while most chief executives thought that performance measures met or exceeded their expectations, several factors helped to explain why the use of performance measures fell short of leaders' expectations. The single most important factor that helped to explain the gap between expectations and actual experience was the extent of "buy-in" of performance measurement by line managers and administrators. The level of workforce unionization and the extent of municipal experience with performance measurement also helped to explain whether performance management was perceived to be successful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the use of outcome-based performance management in Swedish central government agencies, with particular reference to how it has evolved in response to the government's growing emphasis on citizen orientation and interagency collaboration. Although a general tendency toward increasing reliance on subjective, user-perceived outcomes is discernible, the use of outcome indicators for internal control purposes is still limited. We also observe inconsistencies and tensions between different outcome indicators in several policy areas and a tendency for some agencies to trade off achievement of these and adapt selectively to the government's reform agenda. The implications of these findings for research and policy development are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For nearly 30 years organizational effectiveness has been a central topic in the study of organizations, but the relevant literature has been characterized by controversy, confusion, and ambiguity. Moreover, powerful institutional and political forces buffet our contemporary public and nonprofit practitioners with narrowly drawn models that emphasize efficiency and productivity at the expense of other dimensions of effectiveness. This article reinvigorates a holistic model of organizational effectiveness, the competing values framework, by combining it with a newer analytic tool, data envelopment analysis, in a study of public university research institutes. This study shows that the framework and the tool are both eminently useful and that they work well in combination. We illustrate that some organizations may need to use a broader set of performance data to take full advantage of this more robust approach to assessing organizational effectiveness. The article concludes with suggestions for their continued use in subsequent effectiveness studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the problems and issues of performance-base management in the U.S. The potential pitfalls include that there is a conviction that performance-orient management has significant advantages for politicians and administrators. Performance and its practices trigger learning cycles for organizations. Performance standards are integrated into contracts.

This article discusses several articles related to performance appraisal methods and processes, published in various journals. The article "Impact of Salesperson Attraction on Sales Managers' Attributions and Feedback," by Thomas E. DeCarlo and Thomas W.