Performance measurement in the public sector: strategies to cope with the risks of performance measurement

Abstract

Many public, professional organizations have introduced performance measurement systems in the belief that they will lead to a transparent organization, offering incentives for performance and able to account for its performance. These systems produce a large number of perverse effects, however. The article presents five successive strategies aimed at preventing these effects where possible: tolerating competing product definitions; banning a monopoly on interpreting production figures; limiting the functions of and forums for performance measurement; strategically limiting the products that can be subjected to performance measurement; and using a process perspective of performance in addition to a product perspective.

Citation

de Bruijn, H. (2002), "Performance measurement in the public sector: strategies to cope with the risks of performance measurement", International Journal of Public Sector Management, Vol. 15 No. 7, pp. 578-594. https://doi.org/10.1108/09513550210448607