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The aim of this paper is to research the effectiveness of different forms of performance management and to trace the factors which influence these effectiveness. In order to better emphasize the context dimensions, it also aims to study two municipal processes in the Dutch public sector, i.e. treatment of building permits and the establishment of environmental policy papers.

The study analyses 57 Dutch municipalities on performance management.

The research shows that management should not intervene nor should it focus on the process itself, contrary to what is normally thought and done. This study also points out that the type of management on output is more important for the effectiveness than the context of the processes. The conclusion may be drawn that process control will lead to less effectiveness in almost all cases. Effective output management should be confined to a combination of input and output control. Although the general management has the tendency to engage in the way processes are conducted, it will need to resist this tendency as much as possible. In addition, intermediate control is ineffective. In the investigated processes more capacity was needed when the general management exercised intermediate control, regardless of the mode. This conclusion is at odds with the widely endorsed desirability and need for intermediate control (monitoring). Control ex ante, in contrast, increases effectiveness in every case. The impression arises that opting for less control (only ex ante and not on processes) makes the type of management more effective.

Output management will have to take the context into account, but also give decentralized managers sufficient degrees of freedom. In order to decentralize adequately, the correct type of management will need to be chosen. Although most authors endorse the importance of context and believe the possibility of output management to be almost completely dependent on this context, this study shows that the effectiveness of output management is virtually entirely dictated by the chosen type of management, no matter the context. The type of management allocating as much freedom to decentralized management as possible, offers the best basis for effective action. Paradoxically, general management could maximize its effectiveness by interfering as little as possible with the process at stake.

The Bertelsmann International Network of Public Libraries was created by the Bertelsmann Foundation of Germany to think flexibly about the public library of tomorrow and to develop model solutions to address the issues faced by public libraries across the world. From the first meeting, topics of relevance to public libraries were discussed and then the first group of participants had to choose a topic to research and create a model which could be implemented in other public libraries. Summaries of all research papers are available on the Internet at www.stiftung. bertelsmann.de Some models are currently being implemented in libraries of the participants and the new members of the Network are currently working on their research.

In this chapter, I take a talk show in which Coen Teulings, then Director of the official Dutch Bureau for Economic Forecasting and Policy Analysis (CPB) was interviewed about its economic forecasts in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008 as point of entry into an examination into how personal experience and judgment enter, and are essential for, the production and presentation of economic forecasts. During the interview it transpired that CPB did not rely on its macroeconomic models, but on personal experience encapsulated in “hand-made” monitors, to observe the unfolding crisis; monitors that were, in Teulings’ words, used to “feel the pulse” of the Dutch economy. I will take this metaphor as a cue to present several historical episodes in which models, numbers, and a certain feel for economic phenomena aimed to make CPB economists’ research more precise. These episodes are linked with a story about vain attempts by CPB director Teulings to drive out the personal from economic forecasting. The crisis forced him to recognize that personal experience was more important in increasing the precision of economic forecasts than theoretical deepening. The crisis thus both challenged the belief in the supremacy of theory driven, computer-based forecasting, and helped foster the view that precision is inevitably linked to judgment, experience and observation, and not seated in increased attention to high theory; scientifically sound knowledge proved less useful than the technically unqualified experiential knowledge of quacks.