Performance‐Based Budgeting: The Contribution of the Program Assessment Rating Tool

Under the President's Management Agenda for performance and budget integration, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) designed the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) to breath new life into performance‐based budgeting as envisioned by the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA). This article discusses what PART is designed to do and how the PART process works. Based on recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports addressing implementation of PART in the last four fiscal years, the article answers such questions as: Has PART made a difference in program operations? What is the relationship between PART and GPRA? Has progress been made in improving the evidence base for PART assessments? How well does PART assess programs related to a common goal? What has been congressional reaction to the PART process? Are PART and performance budgeting making a difference in government?     

The Problem with Programs: Multiple Perspectives on Program Structures in Program‐Based Performance‐Oriented Budgets

Often the transition to performance‐based budgeting requires the initial development of a program structure. While a substantial body of literature is available to assist governments in developing performance measures, program development has received little recent attention in the scholarly literature. This research draws on a case study of the State of Georgia's effort to develop a program structure. The problems encountered by Georgia provide the foundation for an analysis that explains how programs interact with competing budgetary purposes and agendas. The analysis in turn suggests ways that budget structures might be adjusted to better balance competing purposes.     

Performance‐Related Pay and the Crowding Out of Motivation in the Public Sector: A Randomized Field Experiment

This article advances our understanding of the effects of monetary rewards on public employee performance and of the contingencies that may moderate these effects. In a randomized control‐group experiment with nurses working at a local health authority in Italy, performance‐related pay (PRP) had a larger effect on task performance when the rewards were kept secret than when they were disclosed. The negative interaction between PRP and visibility was stronger among participants who were exposed to direct contact with a beneficiary of their efforts, which heightened their perception of making a positive difference in other people's lives. These results are consistent with theoretical predictions that monetary incentives for activities with a prosocial impact may crowd out employee image motivation. There were no crowding‐out effects when a symbolic reward was substituted for the monetary incentive.     

Cream‐Skimming,Parking and Other Intended and Unintended Effects of High‐Powered,Performance‐Based Contracts

As performance‐based contracting in social welfare services continues to expand, concerns about potential unintended effects are also growing. We analyze the incentive effects of high‐powered, performance‐based contracts and their implications for program outcomes using panel data on Dutch cohorts of unemployed and disabled workers that were assigned to private social welfare providers in 2002 to 2005. We employ a difference‐in‐differences design that takes advantage of the fact that contracts gradually moved from partial performance‐contingent pay to full (100 percent) performance‐contingent contracting schemes. We develop explicit measures of selection into the programs and find evidence of cream skimming and other gaming activities on the part of providers, but little impact of these activities on program outcomes. Moving to a system with contract payments fully contingent on performance appears to increase job placements, but not job duration, for more readily employable workers.     

Survey‐Based Measurement of Public Management and Policy Networks

Networks have become a central concept in the policy and public management literature; however, theoretical development is hindered by a lack of attention to the empirical properties of network measurement methods. This paper compares three survey‐based methods for measuring organizational networks: the roster, the free‐recall name generator, and a hybrid name generator that combines these two classic approaches. Results indicate that the roster and free‐recall name generator methods both suffer from important limitations. The roster method tends to measure many linkages among a limited set of network actors, whereas the name generator tends to measure fewer linkages among a larger set of network actors. Using survey data on policy networks within California regional planning processes (N = 752), we find that the hybrid method strikes an effective balance between these techniques. The hybrid approach performs well in terms of identifying a large number of network actors and interconnections between them. Although no survey‐based measurement technique is perfect, this study suggests that the hybrid name generator is an excellent alternative for the measurement of complex networks with large or shifting boundaries that encompass a diverse set of actors.     

Support for Performance‐Based Funding: The Role of Political Ideology,Performance, and Dysfunctional Information Environments

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.     

新公共管理范式述评：理论建构与反思

新公共管理思潮以现代经济学基本原理和私营部门的先进管理方法为其理论基石,主张在政府公共部门广泛采用私营部门成功的管理经验和方法,坚持顾客主权,坚持市场优位,重视产出测度和绩效评估,以较低的成本建构一个具有高度回应性的政府,实现公共行政市场化取向的改革。新公共管理范式确实在某种程度上反映了公共行政发展的客观规律和一般趋势。毋庸质疑,对我国公共行政改革的理论和实践具有重要的借鉴价值。     

Evidence‐Based Policy‐Making: The Elusive Search for Rational Public Administration

Evidence‐based policy making has been criticised as a revival of the ‘rationality project’ in which democratic politics is regarded as rent‐seeking and a deadweight loss to society. In response, the evidence‐based policy movement has failed to articulate a defence in which the rationality animating the policy process is situational and contextual rather than unique and authoritative. This article traces the movement's motto –‘what works?’– to the American pragmatist movement, whose influence on Harold Lasswell and New Labour in the UK was substantial. This article argues that the ambition for evidence‐based policy‐making should be seen in terms of the transition from a single, unique and universal rationality toward multiple rationalities that vary according to different policy making contexts. Interpreted in such terms, evidence‐based policy making can avoid several of the main criticisms, and offer strong potential to contribute to solving policy problems.     

Outcomes–Based Performance Management in the Public Sector: Implications for Government Accountability and Effectiveness

Requirements for outcomes–based performance management are increasing performance–evaluation activities at all government levels. Research on public–sector performance management, however, points to problems in the design and management of these systems and questions their effectiveness as policy tools for increasing governmental accountability. In this article, I analyze experimental data and the performance–management experiences of federal job–training programs to estimate the influence of public management and system–design factors on program outcomes and impacts. I assess whether relying on administrative data to measure program (rather than impacts) produces information that might misdirect program managers in their performance–management activities. While the results of empirical analyses confirm that the use of administrative data in performance management is unlikely to produce accurate estimates of true program impacts, they also suggest these data can still generate useful information for public managers about policy levers that can be manipulated to improve organizational performance.     

The Impact of Performance Management on Performance in Public Organizations: A Meta‐Analysis

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.