Norman, Richard
Managing through measurement or meaning? Lessons from experience with New Zealand's public sector performance management - 2002 - p.619-28. - Dec
Comprehensive adoption of systems for managing for results as an alternative to procedure-based bureaucracy has earned the New Zealand public sector a reputation as the `world's most advanced performance system' (Kettl, 2007: 7). Research with a cross-section of users of this system, now nearly 15 years old, reveals a variety of responses. True Believers support a current focus on measurement and think that more effort should be put into creating clearer, more observable measures that emphasise outcomes. Pragmatic Sceptics see reported measures as part of a new game of public management and at best a starting point for asking about the substance behind the form. Active Doubters believe that too much emphasis on measurement gets in the way of the `real work' of developing relationship-based work in a political environment. Issues of meaning are seen to be more important than measurement for the further development of the system. - Reproduced.
Public administration - New Zealand
Public administration
Managing through measurement or meaning? Lessons from experience with New Zealand's public sector performance management - 2002 - p.619-28. - Dec
Comprehensive adoption of systems for managing for results as an alternative to procedure-based bureaucracy has earned the New Zealand public sector a reputation as the `world's most advanced performance system' (Kettl, 2007: 7). Research with a cross-section of users of this system, now nearly 15 years old, reveals a variety of responses. True Believers support a current focus on measurement and think that more effort should be put into creating clearer, more observable measures that emphasise outcomes. Pragmatic Sceptics see reported measures as part of a new game of public management and at best a starting point for asking about the substance behind the form. Active Doubters believe that too much emphasis on measurement gets in the way of the `real work' of developing relationship-based work in a political environment. Issues of meaning are seen to be more important than measurement for the further development of the system. - Reproduced.
Public administration - New Zealand
Public administration