How Can Public Managers Use Performance Management for Improvement Without Demotivating Employees?

2021 ◽  
pp. 142-160
Author(s):  
Poul A. Nielsen ◽  
Caroline H. Grøn
Keyword(s):  
Performance Management ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Performance Information ◽  
Management Tools ◽  
Performance Management Systems ◽  
Public Managers ◽  
Hard Time ◽  
New Public

Performance management systems in public organizations have grown in importance since the advent of new public management, but they often have a hard time delivering on their promises. This chapter discusses how managers can use performance management tools without demotivating their employees. The chapter points to six guidelines which should be kept in mind when using such tools. Managers should be given procedural autonomy; performance information should be used to increase learning; links between performance and rewards should be considered carefully; performance information and management practices should be used to support professional development and to avoid negative motivational effects and gaming; performance information should be used as a basis for dialogue; and, finally, performance management should increase employee autonomy and avoid documentation overload.

scholarly journals Evidence-based Nursing in the IED: From Caring to Curing?

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jette Ernst
Keyword(s):  
Performance Management ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Career Pathways ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Management Tools ◽  
Theory Of Practice ◽  
New Public ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Nursing Career

Danish hospitals are major sites of healthcare reform, and new public management accountability and performance management tools have been applied to improve the quality and efficiency of services. One consequence of this is that nurses’ work in hospitals is increasingly standardized through medical evidence. Using Bourdieu’s theory of practice in combination with an ethnographic field study, it is analyzed how the nurses of a Danish Integrated Emergency Department respond to the changing conditions of work. It is illuminated how two opposing approaches to nursing of humanistically and pluralistically oriented caring, and evidence-based scientifically oriented curing inform nursing in the department. The curing approach is however trumping the caring approach. Curing creates new nursing career pathways and is by some nurses embraced with enthusiasm. For others, the new situation creates tension and distress. It is illustrated how the nurses position their practice in relation to the changing working conditions taking sides for either curing or caring, or finding a way to maneuver in between the two. The article argues that the normative enforcement of the curing approach may carry unintended side effects to the goals of quality and efficiency enhancements.

New Public Management and Its Influence on Museum Performance: The Case of Czech Republic

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 339-361
Author(s):  
Michal Plaček ◽  
Cristina del Campo ◽  
Milan Půček ◽  
František Ochrana ◽  
Milan Křápek ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Performance Management ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Statistical Significance ◽  
Data Envelopment ◽  
Management Tools ◽  
New Public ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Administrative Decentralization

The article analyzes the influence of particular instruments of the New Public Management reforms on the performance of Czech museums. We examine the impact of administrative decentralization, management autonomy, and performance management tools, using a survey, two-stage data envelopment analysis, and focus groups. Using these methods, we have been able to confirm the significative impact of administrative decentralization and substantial autonomy. However, the statistical significance of financial autonomy was not confirmed, neither was the way in which objectives are set, nor the use of quality management methods to achieve performance.

Public governance tensions: a managerial artefacts-based view

2021 ◽  
pp. 002085232098815
Author(s):  
Khouloud Senda Bennani ◽  
Anissa Ben Hassine ◽  
Bachir Mazouz
Keyword(s):  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
Management Tools ◽  
The Public ◽  
Administrative Reforms ◽  
Public Managers ◽  
New Public ◽  
Level Of Knowledge ◽  
Public Organisations

The aim of this article is to categorise the factors of tension in public organisational settings. The context of the administrative reforms undertaken in Tunisia has been chosen as an empirical illustration of the public governance tensions associated with managerial artefacts. The study focuses on three types of factors. An analysis of these factors confirms the theories on the appropriation of management tools and helps raise the existing level of knowledge in relation to the processes to mitigate public governance tensions within public organisations. Points for practitioners Today, the modernisation of public governance goes hand in hand with the introduction of new public management tools in administrative settings. On a practical level, the appropriation of these tools generates a tense relationship between political decision-makers and public managers. Often perceived from the perspective of paradoxical demands and antagonistic relationships that disrupt the daily life of state organisations, public governance tensions can be managed as long as they are identified and categorised in the light of the factors of tension associated with the reforms undertaken.

English public management reform after 2010

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewan Ferlie ◽  
Sue Dopson ◽  
Chris Bennett ◽  
Michael D. Fischer ◽  
Jean Ledger ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Performance Management ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Management Reform ◽  
Big Society ◽  
New Public ◽  
Primary Care Sector ◽  
The Global Financial Crisis

This chapter characterizes the overall strategy of public services reform apparent in England after the global financial crisis of 2008 and during the period of the UK’s Coalition government 2010–15. It argues that what can be termed a ‘proto narrative’ of reform, orientated around so-called ‘Big Society’ ideas, emerged around 2010. However, we argue it was trumped in the end by Treasury-led and New Public Management-friendly austerity discourse. The concrete example is taken of the health policy to form new clinical commissioning groups in the primary care sector. They were presented as a mechanism which could promote professional engagement in commissioning. However, they were soon subjected to top-down performance management pressures and systems, including strong attempts to prevent financial deficits from emerging at a local level, which eroded bottom-up and professionally driven innovation. We conclude that the Big Society proto reform narrative failed to consolidate itself.

Collaboration Consequences: New Public Management and Police-Academic Partnerships

2021 ◽  
pp. 193672442098437
Author(s):  
Carrie B. Sanders ◽  
Debra Langan
Keyword(s):  
Policy Development ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Organizational Contexts ◽  
Police Services ◽  
New Public ◽  
Academic Partnerships ◽  
Institutional Strategies

With increasing pressure on public organizations to demonstrate accountability, police services and public universities are being tasked with demonstrating how their institutional strategies are effective and economically efficient. In this paper, we draw on our own research collaborations with two different Canadian police services (Bluewater and Greenfield) on a similar community crime prevention strategy, Situation Tables. We illustrate how new public management practices are embedded in the political, economic, and organizational contexts that have inspired police-academic partnerships and invigorated the evidence-based policing movement in Canada. Our analysis illustrates how our partnerships were influenced by the performance strand of new public management that prioritizes the quantification of measures of outputs over qualitative evaluations of impact. We argue that these practices, if not interrogated, can jeopardize the integrity of evidence-based practice and policy development. Academic freedom must be retained when partnering with the police to ensure an examination of the implications of police practices.

scholarly journals Bringing the Law Back in the Law-Government Nexus in an Era of Network Governance

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stavros Zouridis ◽  
Vera Leijtens
Keyword(s):  
Public Management ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Network Governance ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Management Theory ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Public ◽  
The Law

Abstract Recently, scholars have claimed that public management theory has too much ignored law. Consequently, the under-legalized conception of public management has produced a flawed understanding of public management theory as well as public management practices, threatening public institutions’ legitimacy. In this article, we argue that law never left public management theory. Rather, the link between government and law has been redefined twice. We refer to the assumptions that constitute this link as the law-government nexus. This nexus changed from lawfulness in a public administration paradigm, to legal instrumentalism in a (new) public management paradigm, and to a networked concept in the public governance (PG) paradigm. In order to prevent a faulty over-legalized conception of public management, bringing the law back in should be built on lessons from the past. This article elaborates on three strategies to reconnect law and public management. We map the strengths and weaknesses of each law-government nexus and illustrate these with the case of the Dutch tax agency. In our strategies that aim to reconceptualize the current law-government nexus, we incorporate the benefits of each paradigm for public management theory. The revised law-governance nexus enables the PG paradigm to correspond to contemporary issues without encountering old pathologies.

Electronic Service Delivery in the Local Indian Community of Visakhapatnam

2011 ◽  
pp. 664-669
Author(s):  
V. Venkatakrishnan
Keyword(s):  
Performance Management ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Indian Community ◽  
The Public ◽  
Electronic Service ◽  
New Public ◽  
Managing For Results ◽  
And Performance

New public management (NPM) conceptualised public administration as a business, to be managed with business-like techniques. Since services had to be assessed by the criteria of quality, efficiency, and satisfaction of citizens, the public sector had to reorganize its processes. As strong emphasis was on the services, improving their delivery was expected to facilitate achieving the above criteria. The terms of the NPM approach such as “customer focus, managing for results, and performance management” have become part of the standard language of public administration (Ali, 2001; Bekkers & Zouridis, 1999; Crossing Boundaries, 2005; Spicer, 2004).

scholarly journals Public sector reform and the state of performance management in Portugal: is there a gap between performance measurement and its use?

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (6/7) ◽  
pp. 613-627
Author(s):  
Ana I. Melo ◽  
Luís F. Mota
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Performance Management ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Ideal Type ◽  
The State ◽  
Performance Information ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Public Managers

PurposeThis paper aims to analyse the state of performance management in the Portuguese public sector as part of the efforts towards public administration reform.Design/methodology/approachTheoretically, the authors took Bouckaert and Halligan's (2008, pp. 35–39) approach into consideration to analyse the adoption of performance management practices. This approach was supplemented by an adaptation of Pollitt and Bouckaert's (2011, p. 33) framework to analyse the context for administrative reforms. The used data analysis techniques include documentary analysis (namely legislation and evaluation reports of reform efforts), secondary data analysis and a survey conducted with 296 Portuguese top public managers.FindingsThe findings show that Portuguese public sector organisations adopted several tools to measure performance over the years, but failed to incorporate performance information into their management practices or to properly use it for either internal or external purposes. Concerning the ideal types proposed by Bouckaert and Halligan (2008, p. 36), Portugal is considered to fit the “performance administration” ideal type, even though it is moving closer to the “managements of performance” ideal type.Originality/valueThis is one of the first comprehensive studies on the state of performance management in Portugal framed within the broader context of public sector reforms. The findings will be of interest both to scholars who study public administration reforms and performance management and to Portuguese policy makers and public managers who are interested in understanding and improving the way performance information is measured, incorporated and used in that sector.

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