BRAADBAART, Okke <br/><br/>
Public sector benchmarking :  a survey of scientific articles, 1990-2005 

 - London, UK :  Sage Publications,  September 2008 
<br/><br/> This article assesses the past 15 years' evolution of Public Sector Benchmarking (PSB) research. We do so with a database of 147 peer-reviewed articles published between 1990 and 2005. Over this period PSB evolved into a mature and strongly international field of research. A theoretical and conceptual rift runs through the literature, with those advocating PSB as a tool for managed competition on one side, and those promoting benchmarking as a voluntary and collaborative learning process on the other. A first challenge facing future PSB researchers is that of closing the gap between the managed and voluntary benchmarking perspectives; a second challenge concerns empirical tests that capture the effects of different benchmarking regimes on the performance of public sector providers