NORMAN, Richard
Managing through measurement or meaning? Lessons from experience with New Zealand's public sector performance management systems - dec. 2002
Comprehensive adoption of system for managing for results as an alternative to procedure-based bureaurcracy has earned the New Zealand public sector a reputation as the `world's a most advanced performance system (Kettl, 2000:7) 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 morew 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
Managing through measurement or meaning? Lessons from experience with New Zealand's public sector performance management systems - dec. 2002
Comprehensive adoption of system for managing for results as an alternative to procedure-based bureaurcracy has earned the New Zealand public sector a reputation as the `world's a most advanced performance system (Kettl, 2000:7) 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 morew 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
