Towards Performance,Quality and Environmental Management in Local Government: the Case of Spain

The search for improvements in the management and quality of public services seems to be a constant in all public administrations, and there is an ever-increasing use of management techniques and models from the business sector. The aim of this paper is to show which management systems are being used by Spanish local governments to improve their management in terms of economy, quality and the environment. Our analysis is based on a questionnaire sent to Spanish local governments about the tools they use and the factors that influence their implementation. The results show that more efforts are necessary to implement performance measurement and total quality management, but they also show some positive aspects, such as the usefulness of performance measurement and its application to decisions in those local governments that have implemented it.     

Management Tools for Quality Performance Improvement in Italian Hospitals

ABSTRACT

Leadership plays a decisive role in improving the quality performance in healthcare organizations. Research examines how Italian hospitals generate conditions to support leadership, at both top management and department/unit level, in improving quality. It focuses on the role of the management in processes for the delegation of responsibilities, and tools implemented to facilitate clinical leadership. Data show that: mandate is linked to full accountability; top management supports leadership for reinforcing outputs; and evaluation processes are systematically implemented. Furthermore, data show that leaders require performance systems to enhance clinical professionalism and to commit to improving performance.     

Obstacles and Opportunities for Sustaining Performance Management Systems

Measuring performance in public organizations has been a growing trend for several decades. Designing, adopting, and implementing this style of management system have been the topic of much practitioner and academic deliberation. One struggle those determined to adopt performance measurement and management systems have faced, though, is the ability to sustain them over time and actually engrain them into their decision-making frameworks. Countless barriers to long-term success exist for public organizations and this article seeks to identify and categorize them. Using a mixed-method survey design, this research shows which factors are the most important to organizations hoping to build a performance system that can stand the test of time. Capacity, knowledge, and buy-in limitations pose serious threats to these reforms and it takes a concerted effort to cultivate not only support from employees and management to pursue performance management but the technical and conceptual capacity to design the right system for the organization.     

A Serious Game: Performance Management in Italian Ministries

In 2009, extensive performance management measures were introduced in Italian ministries, following a significant legislative initiative. The objectives that were initially set, however, have not yet been reached. In the paper, the authors discuss this issue, starting with the consideration of the main limits on the introduction of performance measurement systems in public organizations. The discussion leads to the conclusion that the shortcomings of performance management depend not only on the persistence of an administrative paradigm, but also on the underestimated impact of control over organizational behavior; where the latter is linked not to mechanical logic processes, but to more sophisticated forms of reactivity or even counter-intuitive sense-making processes.     

International Sanitation Management and Performance Measurement: Taking Out the Trash

Internationally, sanitation management has been a critical area of contention, especially in recent years with tightening budgets and resource reductions to public services. Our article reviews the management strategies, actions, and developments that have led to sanitation incidents of piling trash and public health concerns. These incidents will be reviewed from a public management perspective underscoring the role of performance measurement and management. The key influences associated with the varying cases are discussed. Both the negative and positive factors of international cases of sanitation management are reviewed.     

Public Administration Dilemmas: An Analysis of Teachers’ Perceptions of the Effects of Performance Evaluation in Post-Colonial South Africa

The adoption of the principles of New Public Management by many governments across the world was invariably accompanied by the implementation of performance evaluation. It is generally accepted that performance evaluation optimizes the performance of workers. As part of a broader investigation which employed a mixed methods approach, the study used data from six interviews with high school principals and 100 survey questionnaires with purposively selected high school teachers in uMgungundlovu District of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. In the analysis of this data, the paper demonstrates that beyond the obvious benefits of performance evaluation such as improvement in performance, there are also unintended consequences such as a narrow focus on measured output, teacher burnout, and falsification of information in order to maximize credit or to avoid punishment. This study illustrates the understandings of high school educators in uMgungundlovu District of the effects of performance evaluation. The findings have important implications for public administration and scholars alike.     

The Design and Execution of Performance Management Systems at State Level: A Comparative Analysis of Italy and Malaysia

This comparative study analyses the experience of Italy and Malaysia in the design and execution of performance management systems at the state level. The article investigates how performance management systems have changed over the past decades, the motivations behind their metamorphoses, their common elements across the two countries, and what accounts for the respective progress. It also investigates the role that the institutional framework plays in making performance management systems robust. The study presents policy recommendations on how governments can create more robust performance management systems for enhanced accountability and transparency in an age of resource constraint.     

Introduction to the Symposium on Exploring the Complexities of Performance Management

ABSTRACT

The editors of this symposium hope that this collection of articles can help advance the public administration literature stream across the multiple organizational and cultural settings in which these performance management studies were conducted. However, this symposium also focused on articles that can help advance the practice of performance management, where specific recommendations are needed to help public officials collect, analyze, and use meaningful outcome measures specifically for the benefits for making better management and policy decisions.     

Management Quality and State Bond Ratings: Exploring the Links between Public Management and Fiscal Outcomes

How and when does management matter for government performance? Focusing on the quality of core management systems, this study proposes that one way management contributes to government effectiveness is by facilitating access to low-cost credit. However, whether well-managed systems have greater access to low-cost debt compared to poorly managed organizations depends in part on prevailing conditions in the external environment. The study tests these propositions in the context of state governments' general obligation bond ratings. Results from the pooled Tobit models show that states with higher-quality management systems are rewarded with higher bond ratings. However, the positive effects of management on bond ratings are attenuated when the economy deteriorates or political uncertainties increase.     

Assessing Operational and Collaborative Performance Management: A Case Study of PhillyStat

Many cities and agencies in the U.S. have adopted the “-Stat” approach, which is called “PerformanceStat” in general. Philadelphia has created PhillyStat as its performance management and tracking tool, of which unique feature is its twofold review process involving both operational and outcome level. This study assesses the capacities of PhillyStat. The assessment suggests four implications for jurisdictional governments and agencies employing the “-Stat” approach. First, the “-Stat” approach should evolve toward strategic review beyond day-to-day operational review. Second, the “-Stat” approach should close the gap in diverse views on government performance. Third, the “-Stat” approach should be used as an effective tool for public management and leadership. Last, the “-Stat” approach should develop capabilities for cross-organizational collaboration.     

Quality Management Awards and Sports Facilities' Performance

Abstract

This paper investigates whether achievement of externally accredited quality awards is associated with better performance in English sports and leisure centres. The investigation uses data from 98 centres which undertook the National Benchmarking Service for sport and leisure centres in 2006/07. These data are organised into four performance dimensions – access (who uses facilities), utilisation (how many users), finance and customer satisfaction. The investigation identifies differences between the performance of centres with quality awards and those without such awards. It tests the statistical significance of these differences. It also correlates the number of awards for each centre with performance. The results offer mixed evidence regarding the association of quality awards with better performance. Centres with quality awards achieve better performance in clear majorities of indicators for financial subsidy, facility utilisation and customer importance-satisfaction gaps associated with selected facility attributes. However, most of these differences are not statistically significant (p < 0.05). There is a weak correlation between the number of awards and performance, which is at its strongest for utilisation and importance-satisfaction gaps. Three of the four quality awards investigated are associated with stronger performance for certain performance dimensions. One quality award, however, is associated with weaker performance for all four performance dimensions. The main implication of this paper is that if quality awards are a means to achieving better performance, then managers need to consider carefully which dimensions of performance they are seeking to improve, as a criterion for deciding which award to aim for.     

Evidence-Based Practice: Challenging the Rational Wisdom

The field of performance measurement (PM) is firmly entrenched as a management practice in many governments, agencies, and nonprofit organizations. Though emerging later, the field of evidence-based practice (EBP) has developed simultaneously as a new approach to enhance agency performance. While both rationality-oriented reforms intend to enhance program or agency performance, these two related rational approaches are seldom considered in concert. This essay examines the conceptual underpinnings and practical linkages between PM and EBP to explore how EBP and PM can be jointly implemented as tools to advance agency goals. As rational approaches aimed at improving performance, these two distinct tools are not substitutes, but integrated components of a results-driven strategic management approach. As a conceptual assessment, the article offers practical advice and broad appeal to performance-oriented practitioners seeking to improve agency performance.     

Revitalizing Local Government Performance Management: Further Dissecting the Role of Socioeconomic Status and Social Mobilization Policy

ABSTRACT

This article examines how socio-economic status and social mobilisation are linked to local government performance management in Nepal. As part of local government reform, Nepal adopted a social mobilisation policy in selected local governments to empower communities for their effective participation. Our results show that socio-economic status and social mobilisation have a significant relationship with performance management. Female literacy, for example, is strongly and significantly associated with performance management, while area has a significant positive relationship but population has only a weak positive relationship. In contrast, poverty has a significant negative correlation. More importantly, mobilisation has a significant, though modest, positive association with performance management particularly in participatory planning and budgeting, fiscal discipline, and administrative management. This indicates that improving the socio-economic status of citizens and their mobilisation for empowered collective action can be one important strategy to improve the performance capacity of local government.     

Managing Goal Commitment in Public Organizations: The Effects of Goal Conflict

Public personnel policies increasingly adapt performance management systems that focus on goal attainment, and this makes goal commitment a critical issue in contemporary public administration research. Few studies have however empirically investigated the relationship between goal conflicts and goal commitment. This study examines the interplay between public managers’ goal prioritization, goal conflict and employees’ goal commitment. Multilevel data from 73 principals and 1464 teachers in secondary education show that goal conflict has a negative effect on the relationship between goal prioritization and goal commitment. The study thus adds to our knowledge about the conditions for influencing public employees’ goal commitment.     

Performance Management in the Public Sector: Does It Decrease or Increase Innovation and Performance?

An important discussion in the performance management literature is how performance contingent incentives affect goal attainment. Incentivizing management tools are typically implemented to improve performance, but due to motivation crowding they may decrease innovation and performance. This article focuses on public research institutions and uses both existing performance studies of publications and two new innovation studies of patents to investigate effects of both financial incentives and sanctions within and between universities. Our findings indicate that public managers can create an environment supportive of innovation and performance through the use of performance management tools, but that this is no automatic link.     

Dilemmas and Horizontal Logics: Subnational Industrial Policy in Spain and Brazil

Scholars of "decentralization" have recently revealed the importance of subnational industrial policy in responding to the challenges of globalization. But these treatments tend to make endemic assumptions about either the universal efficiency or inefficiency of decentralization. This article argues that subnational industrial policy performance is politically contingent and develops national patterns that are more composite than endemic. Political contingency is analyzed in terms of subnational incumbents'incentives to delegate authority and resources to industrial policy agencies and the degree of symmetry in authority and information flows across these agencies. A cross-regional/cross-national comparison of several subnational units in Spain and Brazil demonstrates that subnational industrial policy is implemented and maintained where incumbents delegate and policy-making agencies are symmetrically integrated.     

Performance Implications of Public Managers’ Goal Prioritization: An Empirical Test of the Link between Internal Management and Organizational Performance

Most studies on the goals-performance nexus focus on the implications of goal design. In public organizations with multiple goals, managerial goal prioritization can, however, in itself play a decisive role for performance. This study examines the effects of managerial goal prioritization and employee commitment on organizational performance. Analyses of parallel surveys of principals and teachers in higher secondary education and archival data on school performance show that principals’ goal prioritization is positively related to high school performance. The findings thus indicate that public managers should concentrate not only on how they design goals, but also on how they prioritize them.     

Transparency for Results: Testing a Model of Performance Management in Open Government Initiatives

Government transparency continues to challenge existing frameworks for understanding organizational performance. Transparency has proven difficult to measure and results assessing its impacts are mixed. This article sets forward a model of performance-based accountability in open government initiatives. Data come from the Open Government Partnership’s (OGP) database of over 1,000 transparency initiatives across 50 countries in 2013. Ordered logistic regression estimates the effect of management practices on three different measures of transparency performance, and the results broadly support the model. Expert interviews from two country cases offer insight into how performance management is used in the context of transparency reforms.     

Motivations Behind Using Performance Measurement: City-wide vs. Selective Users

Abstract

This article identifies and describes the utilisation of performance measurement in Florida local governments. Two research questions are considered here: which factors influence Florida city governments to use performance measurement? And how do the factors associated with cities that are city-wide users differ from cities that are selective users? The paper develops a framework constructed from literatures in performance measurement and management innovation to develop hypotheses that are tested with 2005 Florida local government data. This study finds strong support for the role of community attributes, form of government and internal capacity as contributors to the use of performance measurement. The study also finds the factors that influence city-wide users are different from factors that influence selective users, especially with regard to revenue size and the reward/incentive system.     

Performance Management, Evaluation and Learning in 'Modern' Local Government

Public sector reforms throughout OECD member states are producing a new model of 'public governance' embodying a more modest role for the state and a strong emphasis on performance management. In the UK, the development of performance management in the context of the 'new public management' has been primarily 'top-down' with a dominant concern for enhancing control and 'upwards account-ability' rather than promoting learning and improvement. The development of performance management and evaluation in local government in the UK has been conditioned by external pressures, especially reforms imposed by central government, which have encouraged an 'instrumental–managerial' focus on performance measurement. The new Labour government's programme of 'modernizing local government' places considerable emphasis on performance review and evaluation as a driver of continuous improvement in promoting Best Value. However, recent research has indicated that the capacity for evaluation in local government is uneven and many obstacles to evaluation exist in organizational cultures. Local authorities need to go beyond the development of review systems and processes to ensure that the capacity for evaluation and learning is embedded as an attribute of 'culture' in order to achieve the purpose of Best Value.