Search results

Efficiency. Innovation. Results. Accountability. These, advocates claim, are the fruits of performance management. In recent decades government organizations have eagerly embraced the performance modelùbut the rush to reform has not delivered as promised. Drawing on research from state and federal levels, Moynihan illustrates how governments have emphasized some aspects of performance managementùsuch as building measurement systems to acquire more performance dataùbut have neglected wider organizational change that would facilitate the use of such information. In his analysis of why and how go

AbstractWhat is the purpose of the applied study of government? In this essay, I lay out one response—that scholars of this topic should help in the job of what I characterize as embedding institutions of public-sector change. Public institutions offer the key means to direct governance, but at the same time also risk becoming sclerotic, failing to adapt to public concerns. How can academics help resolve this duality, matching public values to contemporary challenges? First, we as scholars can play a role in purposeful problem framing. Second, we can study and document related behavior and empirical outcomes. Finally, we can design solutions. I illustrate these processes with examples from my own research, discussing performance management, administrative burdens, and public personnel systems.

AbstractFor over a century, the value of employee protections and limits on direct political control has been the sine qua non of a merit‐based bureaucracy for the US public service. Such assumptions are at odds with the desire of populist governments to exert control over institutions of governance. This tension emerged during the Trump administration. Trump's Schedule F Executive Order sought to transform much of the career public service into political appointees, allowing them to be removed if they were not performing according to the president's goals. In the chaotic last days of the Trump administration, the order was not implemented, but Schedule F offers both a glimpse of an alternative process for public management policymaking that excludes the field of public administration, as well as a potential harbinger for the future of the US civil service.

Related Content: Ni, Sugimoto, and Robbin (PAR July/August 2017)
Related Content: Berry (PAR July/August 2017)

Interest in performance management has never been higher. But what does actual research on this topic tell us about the effects of performance management, reform efforts, and governance more generally? Historically, the answer often seemed to be that such reforms did not work very well. This article focuses on a recent chapter in the history of performance management at the U.S. federal government, the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). PART was created by the George W. Bush administration, and ended by the Obama White House. PART, like many management initiatives, came and went. What distinguishes it, however, is the quality and breadth of the research it prompted—research that has increased our knowledge of performance management and reform implementation as well as a whole host of fundamental governance phenomena such as political ideology, administrative burden, performance information use, leadership commitment, and goal ambiguity.

This article draws upon studies of organizational culture and sense‐making to develop a theory of culture‐switching. Culture‐switching occurs when organizational actors shift emphasis from one existing organizational cultural assumption to another to reshape organizational action. The concept is demonstrated in a case study of the Hurricane Katrina response by the US Department of Defense (DOD). A slow initial DOD response arose because of self‐imposed red‐tape designed to limit engagement in crisis response, reflecting a cultural assumption of the need to maintain autonomy. DOD leaders altered the nature of the response by committing to another widely‐shared cultural assumption: a 'can‐do' approach to achieving difficult goals regardless of obstacles. The case illustrates how different organizational cultural assumptions interact with red tape to foster either inertia or a proactive response.