Performance Management in the Public Sector

There has been a great deal of work undertaken on employee performance management with the Australian Public Service (APS) over the last 4 years. The objective has been to focus upon achieving high performance rather than merely preventing poor performance. This refocus was adopted to reflect the increasing complexity of the work, a rise in the need for knowledge work, and escalations in the speed and frequency of change; all this within a context requiring a reduction in costs while still meeting the growing expectations of the public and government. This pair of papers reflects on where employee performance management has got to as a result of the work. Dr. Damian West from the Australian Public Service Commission identifies the continuing importance of effective employee performance management to the APS and public sectors more widely. He highlights the progress that has been made so far, demonstrating the importance of implementation of the process. He suggests that, now that a framework for assessing the potential for employee performance management processes has been established, accountability of the system implementation and adoption will become paramount. Professor Deborah Blackman, whilst echoing the real progress that has been made, suggests that for real improvement in performance management outcomes there needs to be a fundamental shift in thinking; not in terms of the processes or of ensuring compliance, but rather that organizations undertaking performance management need to be much clear as to the strategic direction such a process is going to support. She suggests that there has been too much emphasis on having a system and not enough on determining what such a system is for. When the papers are combined, it can be seen that much progress has been made in terms of the reorientation towards high performance and how to support organizations to work towards this. The next step, for there to be real outcome improvements, is for organizations to be more overt in determining what high performance will look like in their context, then clarifying that to all those involved in developing performance management so that accountabilities at all levels can be agreed, supported, and effective.     

论公共部门人力资源管理发展的新趋势

公共部门人力资源管理是整个社会人力资源管理的重要组成部分,是公共部门实施管理活动的前提和基础,它直接影响公共管理活动的正常开展。随着时代的发展,公共部门人力资源管理出现了一系列新的发展趋势。     

Implementing Federal Credit Reform: Challenges Facing Public Sector Financial Managers

This articles discusses the budgetary accounting framework instituted by the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990. It identifies challenges facing credit agency managers who will be responsible for implementing new credit reform budgetary accounting systems, as envisioned by the legislation and the Office of Management and Budget's revised credit apportionment and budget execution instructions.     

Public Sector Organizations and Reputation Management: Five Problems

ABSTRACT

This article discusses five problems that most public organizations will face when adopting a popular, yet largely unexplored management concept: reputation management. The inherently political nature of public organizations constrains their reputation management strategies. Furthermore, they have trouble connecting with their stakeholders on an emotional level, standing out as unique and differentiated organizations, communicating as coherent bodies, and maintaining excellent reputations. In this article, we examine in depth the nature of these problems and seek to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the possibilities and limitations of reputation management in a public sector context.     

Goal Setting and Performance Management in the Public Sector

ABSTRACT

The public sector in North America as well as parts of Europe is increasingly adopting a performance management system that includes goal setting, coaching, and the evaluation of an employee on goal attainment. The purpose of this article is three-fold. First, the extant literature on goal setting for individual employees is summarized in terms of its applicability to the public sector. Second, the importance of context to goal setting and performance management in the United States and Italy is discussed. Third, coaching techniques, based on theory and empirical evidence, for increasing the probability of goal attainment by public sector employees are examined.     

Public Sector Management Reform: Convergence or Divergence?

This collection of articles is yet further evidence of an emerging consensus around the world of the need to improve the performance of the public sector. This is happening across countries at different stages of development, with widely divergent cultures and different forms of economic organization. Gu Jiaqi, in discussing reform in China, refers to the public demanding that governments act with fewer inputs and with best outcomes. The recently published book, Reinventing Government, which appears to have captured the attention of both law–makers and the bureaucracy in the US (with some good reason), notes that Americans are demanding "more performance for less money" (1992, 2). In Australia, administrative reform was launched under the umbrella of a Financial Management Improvement Program which sought to change attitudes in the public sector to be much more concerned with outcomes and constantly relate these outcomes to the resources being applied to achieving them.
There seems to be little doubt that there is a common language in the area of results. While this is of considerable interest, of greater interest is the variety of means that are being pursued to achieve these ends. This note raises some questions about the compatibility of some of the means and the ends. It suggests that some of the means identified in these articles may be counter–productive.     

Governance Issues for Public Sector Boards

The push to apply corporate governance arrangements from the private sector into the public sector is a manifestation of the ongoing search for ways to improve accountability and performance. This small interview study reports on the experience of senior Commonwealth public servants and board directors trying to work within the corporate governance frameworks set out in the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act (1997) and the Financial Management and Accountability Act (1997). It suggests that lines of accountability can be blurred, formal authority can be subverted, and safeguards to protect the public interest, against harms such as political patronage, may be weak or absent. Many agencies do not have appropriate procedures for assessing their own governance arrangements. There is considerable resistance to the notion that a central authority should be established with the dedicated purpose of overseeing governance arrangements and practices in the Commonwealth.     

Ethics and Public Sector Management: The Western Australian Experience

This paper considers two specific difficulties in developing a code of ethics for the public sector, the contested nature of the values to be expressed in a code of ethics and the organisational demands of a corporate managerialist framework which uses performance indicators. Using the example of the Western Australian public sector code of ethics, the authors conclude that a good strategy for developing a public sector code of ethics will recognise contestability, demonstrate philosophical integrity in the code, mesh the code with identified performance indicators and provide whistleblower protection. The strategy described provides a sufficient framework for any public sector bureaucracy to develop a justifiable code of ethics for use by public sector employees.     

Emerging Directions in Public Sector Management in New South Wales

This article describes some of the changes taking place within the NSW public sector to enable it to meet efficiently the future demands of a diverse community. It features a range of major reforms that are under way across legislative, administrative and financial frameworks to enhance the sector's ability to cope with technological advances and enhance service delivery.     

Public Sector Reform

Reform is never far from the centre of public administration practice and scholarship. In this article Doug McTaggart, the chairman of the Queensland Public Service Commission, and Janine O'Flynn, from the University of Melbourne, explore the challenges of reform and the state of play. McTaggart, who was a commissioner on the Queensland Commission of Audit, sets out the case that business as usual will no longer suffice given the range of challenges faced by governments. He sets out to explain how we ended up in our current state and what needs to happen to repair it, drawing on deep experience in the practice of reform. O'Flynn positions reform as one of the central questions in public administration and management and makes the case for rethinking reform conceptually to drive change in practice. In doing so she points to our weaknesses in determining whether reform fails or succeeds and makes the case that, until we rethink reform, business as usual might be all we end up with. McTaggart and O'Flynn bring together the expertise of practice and academia to bring new insights in this persistent challenge of public administration, and raise a series of questions for debate.     

Rethinking Leadership for the Public Sector

Leadership and management are best thought of as a matter of competencies. Or are they? The paper challenges the current orthodoxy in Australia on this question, and suggests that leadership and management need to be regarded as reflecting opposing values. The paper also distinguishes between charismatic and collective forms of leadership, and proposes the latter as likely to be of greater value in a public sector context. A challenge for public sector organisations is how to strike and maintain a suitable balance between management for ongoing operations and leadership for deep–reaching change. Strategies for developing collective leadership capability are suggested.     

Performance Management and Public Sector Reform: The Norwegian Hospital Reform

This article addresses the development of new performance management systems related to public sector reforms. One such system is Management by Objectives and Results (MBOR), based on an official OECD model. Such a system tries to establish unambiguous goals, objectivity, and incentive elements into often traditionally trust-based systems embedded in a complex political-administrative context. To analyze such performance management systems and how they work in practice, we focus on a recent reform of the hospital structure in Norway. Using a broad institutional perspective, we argue that the MBOR-system in Norway is a mixed and complex system encompassing different kinds of logic. These include instrumental elements from the new performance management systems combined with ad hoc preventive efforts by the political leadership, the influence of cultural constraints, elements of rather inappropriate self-interested action, and pressure from the environment. The study reveals that the hospital reform in Norway in practice can be seen as an integrated model, combining informal trust-based approaches and formal performance management measures. It also shows that negative side effects and dysfunctions might occur.     

Paradoxes and Pendulum Swings: Performance Management in New Zealand's Public Sector

Under New Zealand's radical state sector reforms, 'empowered' managers are held accountable in an arm's length way by politicians and control agencies through the use of clearly stated objectives and the availability of quality information about progress towards those objectives. However, empirical research indicates that this thermostatic metaphor embodies a number of paradoxes. A great deal of international attention has been paid to these reforms, but New Zealand has not discovered any ultimate resolution of the fundamental paradox of modern bureaucracy — the tendency for control to subvert purpose — and is now seeking a new 'balance' between these two managerial imperatives.     

Internationalisation of the Public Sector

This article argues a case for exporting government services in cases where the public sector has relevant expertise and can operate within acceptable risks. Drawing on Victorian experience, it suggests structures and procedures for effective operation in international markets.     

Public Sector Change,Organisational Culture and Financial Information: A Study of Local Government

Local government has undergone substantial change in Victoria, but the reforms have not necessarily resulted in improved financial management practices. This article examines the organisational culture of a sample of local governments, the critical events which have impacted on them, and their use of accounting, budgetary and financial (ABF) information. We find that despite the change process, organisational culture is not focused on competitive practices, although compulsory competitive tendering remains the most influential event. Consistent with the aims of reform, the quality and use of ABF information has improved over the last decade. This article will be of interest to those in government wishing to implement change programs aimed at increasing financial resource use efficiency.     

Japan: The Prospects for Public Sector Change

There have been some public sector changes in Japan, especially since 1981. The changes have contributed to the country's outstanding economic development. Recent events, however, question whether these changes have been sufficient and whether the sector is meeting the needs of Japanese society today.
Many of Japan's political, economic and social certainties disappeared in the 1990s including automatic economic growth and the 38 year reign of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party government. These developments and events such as the Kobe earthquake, the HIV blood contamination scandal and the collapse of financial institutions suggest that a more fundamental reform of the public sector is still required.