The Evaluation of Performance in the Mexican Federal Government: A Study of the Monitoring Agencies' Modernization Process

An initial assessment of the Mexican government’s implementation of the Model for the Performance Evaluation of Internal Control Organizations (MIDO) can reveal its actual influence on the organizational culture of those agencies. MIDO began in 2003 as an instrument to transform all federal monitoring agencies into effective, performance‐driven organizations. It seeks to modify the behavior of internal control organizations in order to shift their rigid focus on control to a more flexible perspective. The idea is to allow them to take co‐responsibility for the performance of the agencies they supervise. The author exposes a contradictory and paradoxical result of the program’s implementation: the “net organizational effect” is different from MIDO’s stated objective. The internal control organizations are not only adopting the discourse of performance, but also they are adapting it to fit their own purposes while keeping their traditional function of supervision intact. They have not internalized the co‐responsibility culture, as MIDO proposes, despite accepting the discourse of performance evaluation.     

Socializer or Signal?, How Agency Accreditation Affects Organizational Culture

Agency accreditation has grown steadily as a management strategy in recent decades. Accreditation is meant to help professionalize public administration work by requiring an agency to adopt policies and practices that are sanctioned by an external organization. Advocates claim that accreditation facilitates the diffusion of best practices and builds a culture of professionalism in an agency. Accreditation clearly leads agencies to adopt formal policies. This article identifies two ways in which accreditation might affect organizational culture: (1) by socializing employees, and (2) by signaling the agency’s priorities to employees. Analyzing attitudinal data from officers in six American police departments, this study finds no association between accreditation and officers’ own values, but finds that accreditation is strongly correlated with officers’ perceptions of their agencies’ priorities.     

Does Involvement in Performance Management Routines Encourage Performance Information Use? Evaluating GPRA and PART

The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993 and the George W. Bush administration’s Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) established new routines that were intended to foster performance management practices. Using data from two surveys, the authors find that the involvement of agency employees in GPRA processes and PART reviews generally had little direct effect on performance information use once other factors are accounted for. The main exception is that managerial involvement in GPRA processes and PART reviews is associated with the use of performance data to refine measures and goals. This reflects the limits of government‐wide reform efforts that depend on difficult‐to‐observe bureaucratic behavior. The authors also find that a series of organizational factors—leadership commitment to results, learning routines led by supervisors, the motivational nature of the task, and the ability to link measures to actions—are positive predictors of performance information use.     

Strategic Human Resource Practices: Introducing Alternatives for Organizational Performance Improvement in the Public Sector

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.     

Performance Management Routines That Work? An Early Assessment of the GPRA Modernization Act

The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993 provided a well‐studied framework for U.S. federal performance management initiatives. In the aftermath of the update of GPRA in 2010 with the GPRA Modernization Act, the authors offer the first systematic scholarly assessment of the new legislation. Managerial use of performance data was an explicit goal of the Modernization Act, an objective that eluded prior federal reforms. The Modernization Act established a new series of performance routines to encourage performance information use. The analysis shows that as federal managers experience those routines, they are more likely to report using performance data to make decisions. Specifically, routines centered on the pursuit of cross‐agency priority goals, the prioritization of a small number of agency goals, and data‐driven reviews are all associated with higher rates of performance information use. The authors also find that managers in better‐run data‐driven reviews report greater use of performance data.     

Political judgments,perceptions of facts,and partisan effects

We test two competing hypotheses about the impact of partisanship and information on people's political judgments and perceptions of facts using Canadians' reactions to a major scandal. Our findings with respect to subjective political judgments confirm the argument that partisan predispositions are crucial. But there is no evidence to support the argument that the polarizing effect of partisanship is most evident among the most informed. When it comes to perceptions of “objective” facts, the results are consistent with Zaller's reception axiom: the more informed people are, the more likely they are to correctly perceive objective facts. Partisanship does not appear to affect these perceptions.     

Is Anybody Listening? Evidence That Voters Do Not Respond to European Parties’ Policy Statements During Elections

Although extensive research analyzes the factors that motivate European parties to shift their policy positions, there is little cross‐national research that analyzes how voters respond to parties’ policy shifts. We report pooled, time‐series analyses of election survey data from several European polities, which suggest that voters do not systematically adjust their perceptions of parties’ positions in response to shifts in parties’ policy statements during election campaigns. We also find no evidence that voters adjust their Left‐Right positions or their partisan loyalties in response to shifts in parties’ campaign‐based policy statements. By contrast, we find that voters do respond to their subjective perceptions of the parties’ positions. Our findings have important implications for party policy strategies and for political representation.     

Presidential Popularity in a Hybrid Regime: Russia under Yeltsin and Putin

In liberal democracies, the approval ratings of political leaders have been shown to track citizens’ perceptions of the state of the economy. By contrast, in illiberal democracies and competitive autocracies, leaders are often thought to boost their popularity by exploiting nationalism, exaggerating external threats, and manipulating the media. Using time‐series data, I examine the determinants of presidential approval in Russia since 1991, a period in which leaders’ ratings swung between extremes. I find that Yeltsin's and Putin's ratings were, in fact, closely linked to public perceptions of economic performance, which, in turn, reflected objective economic indicators. Although media manipulation, wars, terrorist attacks, and other events also mattered, Putin's unprecedented popularity and the decline in Yeltsin's are well explained by the contrasting economic circumstances over which each presided.     

Street-Level Bureaucrats as Individual Policymakers: The Relationship between Attitudes and Coping Behavior toward Vulnerable Children and Youth

Lipsky (1980) pointed out that street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) are important policymakers due to the discretion they exercise and argued from a structural perspective that these workers manifest relatively similar coping behaviors owing to their shared working conditions, characterized by chronically limited resources and non-voluntary clients. Using data from a national survey of municipal child welfare caseworkers in Denmark, we further develop Lipsky's theory from an agency perspective by focusing on variation in coping among SLBs and examining the extent to which such variation is explained by SLBs’ attitudes towards the target group, the objectives and content of their jobs, and their perceptions of the capacity of their institutions. We find that SLBs’ aversion to and tolerance of the client group, their perceptions of institutional capacity in terms of municipal resources and local political inefficacy, and their conceptual modification of job contents are all related to their use of coping.     

Implementing PBB: Conflicting Views of Success

A modern budget reform, performance‐based budgeting (PBB) emphasizes the measurement of government performance by agencies and public servants. In this article we define PBB as requiring strategic planning regarding agency mission, goals and objectives, and a process that requests quantifiable data that provide meaningful information about program outcomes. Performance‐based budgeting requirements are now pervasive in the states. Of forty‐seven states with PBB requirements, thirty‐one have legislated the process to be conducted, while sixteen have initiated the reform through budget guidelines or instructions.¹What remains unknown, yet of vital interest to state administrators, their staff, legislators, and citizens, regards implementation status of PBB systems. How many states are utilizing a PBB process as prescribed by law or administrative directive? And if PBB has been implemented, has it been successful regarding improvement of agency effectiveness and decision making about spending? Perhaps most importantly, has PBB influenced appropriation decisions?. This research is based on responses to a mail survey of executive and legislative budgeters regarding the PBB system established in their state. Results discussed in this article consider budgeters’ response about PBB implementation status and effectiveness as conducted. We find that there are differing perceptions across the branches of government regarding both the extent of PBB implementation as well as its success. Results show that states with better‐known PBB systems have not necessarily realized greater success in terms of effectiveness from this budget reform than states with less popularly known systems, at least as perceived by the budgeters included in this article.     

TURBULENT TRANSITION AND ORGANIZATIONAL CHANCE: RELATING POLICY OUTCOMES TO STRATEGIC ADMINISTRATIVE CAPACITIES

Much of the literature on public policy with its institutional and legislative emphases conveys the view that organizational effectiveness is primarily dependent on actors external to the agency. That is, laws prescribe programs and operating procedures; overlapping jurisdictions restrict innovative behavior; and the politics o f fund budgeting encourage complacency and incrementalism. This article proposes an alternative set of propositions explaining policy outcomes and agency performance as a function of internal administrative considerations. The propositions are empirically evaluated using data from Pacific Coast port authorities during the "container revolution" and environmental movement. The results suggest that variance in strategic performance can be attributed to (1) perceptions about intergovernmental relations and performance gap, (2) an agency micro-structure for strategic planning and policy analysis, and (3) a set of intervening administrative variables.     

Citizen (Dis)satisfaction: An Experimental Equivalence Framing Study

This article introduces the importance of equivalence framing for understanding how satisfaction measures affect citizens’ evaluation of public services. Does a 90 percent satisfaction rate have a different effect than a logically equivalent 10 percent dissatisfaction rate? Two experiments were conducted on citizens’ evaluations of hospital services in a large, nationally representative sample of Danish citizens. Both experiments found that exposing citizens to a patient dissatisfaction measure led to more negative views of public service than exposing them to a logically equivalent satisfaction metric. There is some support for part of the shift in evaluations being caused by a negativity bias: dissatisfaction has a larger negative impact than satisfaction has a positive impact. Both professional experience at a hospital and prior exposure to satisfaction rates reduced the negative response to dissatisfaction rates. The results call for further study of equivalence framing of performance information.

Practitioner Points

• The valence (positive/negative) of performance information can have substantial effects on citizens’ perception of public services—even if the underlying performance is exactly the same.
• Presenting citizens with a dissatisfaction rate of 10 percent induces a much more negative evaluation of public services than presenting them with a logically equivalent satisfaction rate of 90 percent.
• Policy makers must carefully consider how minor equivalent changes in the presentation of performance information can induce large shifts in citizens’ perceptions of public service performance.

     

Letter from the Editor

ABSTRACT

Organizational theory and research suggests that organizational performance may be affected by environmental circumstances. However, the available evidence on this important issue for public organizations relies primarily on “objective” archival measures of the environment drawn from secondary data sources. Perceptual measures gauging managerial “subjective” views on the nature of the task environment are also likely to be important determinants of organizational outcomes. In this paper, a comprehensive model of the impact of “objective” and “subjective” task environments on the performance of local government service departments is formalized and tested. The results suggest that both objective and subjective environmental munificence are positively related to performance, and that objective and subjective environmental dynamism are negatively related to service achievements. In addition, objective task complexity is negatively related to performance. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

绩效管理改革的效果:来自美国联邦政府的证据

从1993年的《政府绩效与结果法案》(GPRA)以及布什政府的项目评估定级工具(PART)已经建立了一种新的政府管理惯例,两者的目的均在于促进美国联邦政府绩效管理实务的发展。但从绩效信息的使用方面来看,两者所做出的努力都极其有限,即一旦考虑其它因素,机构雇员不论是否参与PART评审,是否参与GPRA的实施进程,他们几乎都没有影响到绩效信息的使用。本文采用顺序Probit回归模型,通过对美国联邦审计总署基于1996、2000、2003和2007年的数据进行调研,最终得出依赖于难以观测的官僚行为来实现的政府改革是具有局限性的以及在政府绩效改善的过程中绩效信息使用的重要性。对数据的深层分析还揭示了一系列影响绩效信息使用的组织因素,这包括领导对结果的承诺、监管者引导学习惯例、工作动机的性质、将测量与行动链接起来的能力、管理的自由裁量权以及利益相关者之间的政治冲突。     

Does Family‐Friendly Policy Matter? Testing Its Impact on Turnover and Performance

This study investigates the relative effects of four types of family‐friendly policies—child care subsidies, paid leave for family care, telework, and alternative work schedules—on turnover rates and effectiveness in federal agencies. Contemporary social exchange theory predicts that an agency’s average level of satisfaction with a specific family‐friendly policy is negatively associated with turnover in the agency but positively associated with overall performance. This analysis differs from common expectations. Only child care subsidies show a positive, significant influence on reducing turnover. Child care subsidies and alternative work schedules reflect positive and significant influences on agency effectiveness. Ironically, an agency’s average satisfaction with telework arrangements proves to be a significant but negative effect on performance.     

Public Service Motivation (PSM) and Support for Citizen Participation: A Test of Perry and Vandenabeele’s Reformulation of PSM Theory

This article examines how public service motivation (PSM) relates to public managers’ attitudes toward citizen participation. Perry and Vandenabeele suggest that PSM effects are moderated and/or mediated by self‐regulation and by the salience of an activity to self‐identity. Using data from Phase IV of the National Administrative Studies Project, latent model results suggest a direct, positive relationship between PSM and citizen participation evaluation. The relationship is not mediated by value congruence but rather is moderated by the perceived importance of the organization’s citizen participation efforts. The moderating effect has three interpretations: (1) PSM has a stronger relationship to evaluation as citizen participation becomes more important in the agency; (2) at low and medium PSM levels, the greater the importance of citizen participation, the lower its evaluation; or (3) at high PSM levels, the greater the importance of citizen participation, the higher its evaluation. This suggests that PSM is more germane for activities such as citizen participation, invoking relevant values as perceived organizational commitment increases.     

The Obama Administration and PBB: Building on the Legacy of Federal Performance‐Informed Budgeting?

The administration of President Barack Obama, like those of his immediate predecessors, is focused on trying to improve the quality of, and use of, performance data. The federal government has been pursuing performance‐informed budget reforms for more than 50 years. Most recently, the Bush administration reforms included the President’s Management Agenda and the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). The Obama administration reforms include: measuring the effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; reducing or eliminating poorly‐performing programs; setting a limited number of short‐term, high‐priority performance goals; and funding detailed program evaluations. The administration is taking a more agency‐driven approach than the Bush administration, but continues to find it challenging to move beyond production of performance data to its use. There should be opportunities to show how performance information can be used for decision making, given the change in the political climate and the needs to reduce spending and the deficit. Historically, there has been little appetite in the Congress for evidence‐based decision making. The administration, however, can continue to demonstrate how federal agencies can use performance information to more effectively manage programs.     

Transformational Leadership and Organizational Processes: Influencing Public Performance

Leaders are essential actors in public performance improvement and organizational change. However, a key question has not been adequately addressed in prior literature on the topic: how do leadership processes make a difference? Using data on New York City public schools, this article explores the organizational mechanisms by which a specific form of principal's leadership—transformational leadership—influences objective organizational outcomes as measured by standardized test scores. The empirical results indicate that a principal's transformational leadership style affects student test scores through the mediating effects of purposeful performance information use and stakeholder engagement.     

Ministerial Leadership and Endorsement of Bureaucrats: Experimental Evidence from Presidential Governments

Scholars have debated what constitutes effective ministerial leadership with respect to administrative competence versus political influence. The authors contribute experimental evidence to this debate through a unique survey design of endorsement experiments. Using original data from 949 national civil servants in South Korea, this article examines civil servants’ assessments of ministerial leadership in three central dimensions of public management: internal management, interbranch coordination, and policy formulation/implementation. Further, existing variation in the characteristics of agencies is used to test whether such variation induces systematic differences in civil servants’ responses. Findings show that that civil servants’ attitudes toward ministerial leadership are asymmetric in nature. Ministers with civil service backgrounds are endorsed in all three dimensions, whereas ministers with legislative backgrounds receive increased support only for interbranch coordination skills. The levels of support for ministers with different backgrounds also vary across agency types. This analysis has implications for public management practice and agency control in presidential governments.     

Managing in the Regulatory Thicket: Regulation Legitimacy and Expertise

Although the influence of government regulation on organizations is undeniable, empirical research in this field is scarce. This article investigates how the understanding of and attitudes toward government regulation among public, nonprofit, and for‐profit managers affect organizational performance, using U.S. nursing homes as the empirical setting. Findings suggest that managers’ perceptions of regulation legitimacy—views of regulation fairness, inspectors’ effectiveness, and internal utility of the mandates—positively affect service quality. Subgroup analysis suggests that managers’ views of regulation matter in nonprofit and for‐profit organizations but not in public organizations. In nonprofit homes, performance declines when managers report higher regulatory expertise—better knowledge of the regulatory standards. In for‐profit facilities, frequent communication with regulators lowers quality. These findings suggest that the regulated entities’ views of government regulation are central to their success, which necessitates improvements in the regulatory process.