What Does 25 Years of Experience Tell Us About the State of Performance Measurement in Public Policy and Management?

Performance measurement in public management is a contested issue. Performance indicators (PIs) have diverse functions for different stakeholders over the life-cycle of a public policy, and the search for better PIs is an ongoing effort. However, instead of seeing the running down, proliferation and strategic use of performance information as dysfunctional, these effects are probably the unavoidable outcomes of functional and effective performance measurement systems in open societies and competitive democracies. PIs may effectively create 'creative destruction' of the present political or managerial status quo. Thus, PIs in political competition may be as important as prices in market competition.     

东亚地区政府科技创新管理的路径分析及启示

科技创新管理是将一般管理学和公共管理学的原理、方法、手段运用于科学技术管理的具体实践。东亚地区的日本、韩国、台湾和香港在经济发展过程中,政府始终保持在科技创新管理过程中的强蛰主导地位,坚持科技创新战略与经济产业政策的强相关性,以行政手段积极推动官、产、学、研协同创新,科技决策和管理部门的政治地位日渐增强。目前．上述东亚地区政府的科技战略规划转向社会民生领域,逐渐弱化科技创新管理的行政集杈倾向,引入现代服务业推动科技成果转化,并通过健全和完善科技金融体系．支持和培育科技创新。总体而言,上述东亚地区政府的科技创新管理体制已趋于完善,对我国实施创新驱动发展战略具有重要的借鉴价值。     

MONITORING AND AUDITING VALUE FOR MONEY IN THE UK: THE SCOPE FOR QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS

This paper argues that there is considerable scope for the introduction of quantitative techniques into the planning and conduct of VFM audit in the UK. A new development in public sector corporate planning is described and criteria for desirable performance indicators are given. VFM assessment problems arising out of vague legislation are illustrated using farm income support policy. The paper concludes that the scope for the use of techniques from economics, management science and psychology will not be properly realised without extensive reform in management research and education.     

Performance indicators and democracy: citizens’ views on the purposes of government websites

Despite the ongoing interest in performance measurement amongst public managers, little is known about citizens’ views on the purposes of performance indicators (PIs). A cross-sectional survey of the Australian adult population was used to examine citizens’ views on government websites which provide PIs. Citizens identified three distinct purposes for these: evaluation and improvement; transparency and accountability; and reward and punishment. These different purposes were found to be related to political attributes, indicating how PIs might support democratic empowerment.     

Financial performance explanations and institutional setting

The aim of this study is to investigate whether country differences in the institutional setting for financial reporting affect the attributes of managers’ explanations of performance in management commentary reports. We include 172 listed companies from five industries (building materials, food processors, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and retail) in the UK, Australia, the USA and Canada in 2003. We find significant country differences in attributional properties of performance explanations in management commentary reports. The US and Canadian companies are generally less assertive and less defensive in causal explanations offered compared to their counterparts in the UK and Australia. The North American companies are also more extensive and formal in their explanations, relying more heavily on technical‐accounting language. These tendencies are most pronounced in the USA, where the aggregate of private and public enforcement is greatest. Taken together, our evidence suggests that higher expected regulatory and litigation costs induce a more elaborative, but risk‐averse explanatory stance that may well reduce the overall incremental value of the explanations offered.     

Has Devolution Increased Democratic Accountability?

This article examines the impact of devolution, the New Public Management and public management culture on accounting for democratic accountability in the first term of the devolved national assemblies and parliament in the UK. Although there is more openness, transparency, consultation and scrutiny with regard to budgets, accounts and performance as a result of devolution, there is extensive information overload. Thus, many politicians are highly dependent on the parliamentary division of labour and are reliant on experts and advisors functioning as buffers and filters of accounting information.     

High-quality regulation: its popularity,its tools and its future

This article examines the impact of devolution, the New Public Management and public management culture on accounting for democratic accountability in the first term of the devolved national assemblies and parliament in the UK. Although there is more openness, transparency, consultation and scrutiny with regard to budgets, accounts and performance as a result of devolution, there is extensive information overload. Thus, many politicians are highly dependent on the parliamentary division of labour and are reliant on experts and advisors functioning as buffers and filters of accounting information.     

New development: Determinants of financial performance in public organizations

In the slipstream of NPM, public organizations worldwide have had to increase their financial performance by adopting management practices. Nonetheless, financial performance (FP) might be mostly predicted by contingencies that are not within direct managerial control. Drawing on evidence from 308 Flemish municipalities, this article shows that organizational and environmental contingencies affect FP, but a significant amount of variation in FP is unexplained—indicating that management could well matter.     

Managerial ownership and the performance of firms: Evidence from the UK

Given the governance issues arising from the separation of ownership from control, the ability to align managerial and shareholder interests via the managerial ownership of equity is an important topic of inquiry. The findings of the primarily US based literature suggest that management is aligned at low and possibly high levels of ownership but is entrenched (pursuing self interests) at intermediate ownership levels. This paper extends the US based literature in a number of important ways. First, the analysis is extended to the UK where there are important differences, as compared to the US, in the governance system. A comparative analysis of key differences between the US and UK governance systems suggest that management should become entrenched at higher levels of ownership in the UK. Some of the reasons for this suggestion are that in the UK management do not have the same freedom as their US counterparts to mount takeover defenses and institutional investors in the UK are more able to co-ordinate their monitoring activities. The empirical results of the paper confirm that UK management become entrenched at higher levels of ownership than their US counterparts. Second, the results from extending the analysis to consider different measures of firm performance and a more generalized form of the relationship confirm the general finding of the US literature of a non-linear relationship between firm performance and managerial ownership.     

Towards Analytic‐deliberative Forms of Risk Governance in the UK? Reflecting on Learning in Radioactive Waste

While participatory forms of risk assessment and management have been the focus of much conceptualisation, experimentation, and evaluation, relatively less effort has gone into understanding how so called ‘analytic‐deliberative’ processes are developing across policy‐for‐real decision contexts. This paper develops a novel typology of citizen‐science interaction as a basis for analysing the nature and extent of recent participatory risk assessment practice in the UK. It draws on the reflections of professional actors operating across the UK environmental risk domain, focusing down on practice in the area of radioactive waste between 1998 and 2003. Compared with past science‐centred approaches, analysis shows an ‘opening up’ of risk decision processes to extended actors, knowledges, and values, with particular importance placed on public involvement in front‐end framing. This is being constrained by a failure to integrate engagement throughout decision processes, the exclusion of publics from assessing/evaluating environmental risks, and the upholding of a strict separation between citizens/science. These patterns of analytic‐deliberative practice — determined by contextual influences, barriers and challenges operating across UK environmental risk issue‐areas — highlight the need for further methodological development and systematic evaluation of relations between processes and outcomes.     

Coping with Ambiguity: Reconciling External Legitimacy and Organizational Implementation in Performance Measurement

This article reports the results of a study of the implementation of performance measurement in 74 UK public sector organizations. Performance measurement is often imposed on organizations by external stakeholders and those charged with implementation have to reconcile the demands of competing interests. These interests reflect the complex relations that 'street-level' public organizations engage in. The authors use institutional theory to make sense of how these relations, and the competing demands of performance measurement, are managed.     

FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY OF STATUTORY AUTHORITIES IN AUSTRALIA

In Australia, statutory authorities constitute the main form of non-Departmental organisation in the public sector. Although devised on UK Westminster blueprints, they have developed several unique characteristics as an organisational type. These characteristics have given rise to a number of problems of unsatisfactory performance, inadequate financial accountability and inappropriate creation processes. Although several improvement initiatives have recently been (or are about to be) adopted to address these issues there is a very real question hanging over their practicality. This paper looks at characteristics of Commonwealth statutory authorities which have an important bearing on these problems; particularly the problem of improving financial accountability for management performance. The paper reviews the accountability context and structures of Commonwealth statutory authorities, highlights various shortcomings which contribute to the present unsatisfactory situation and discusses factors that may determine the possible extent of real improvement from forthcoming initiatives.     

Is management still a science?

New technologies are transforming products, markets, and entire industries. Yet the more science and technology reshape the essence of business, the less useful the concept of management itself as a science seems to be. On reflection, this paradox is not so surprising. The traditional scientific approach to management promised to provide managers with the capacity to analyze, predict, and control the behavior of the complex organizations they led. But the world most managers currently inhabit often appears to be unpredictable, uncertain, and even uncontrollable. In the face of this more volatile business environment, the old-style mechanisms of "scientific management" seem positively counterproductive. And science itself appears less and less relevant to the practical concerns of managers. In this article, science journalist David Freedman argues that the problem lies less in the shortcomings of a scientific approach to management than in managers' understanding of science. What most managers think of as scientific management is based on a conception of science that few current scientists would defend. What's more, just as managers have become more preoccupied with the volatility of the business environment, scientists have also become preoccupied with the inherent volatility--the "chaos" and "complexity"--of nature. They are developing new rules for complex behavior in physical systems that have intriguing parallels to the kind of organizational behaviors companies are trying to encourage. In fact, science, long esteemed by business as a source of technological innovation, may ultimately prove of greatest value to managers as a source of something else: useful ways of looking at the world.     

Evidence on the Management of Public Services Innovation

Innovation is a central part of the UK Government's programme to improve public services. However, there is little evidence on how innovation is managed in public service organizations. Drawing upon theories of the management of innovation and longitudinal case studies, this article demonstrates the iterative and complex ways in which innovations unfold. Issues of particular importance in the management of innovation include the role of teams and teamwork, projects, pilots and experiments, and various forms of project management.     

我国管理科学研究热点及代表人物的可视化分析

进入新世纪以来,管理科学在我国取得了蓬勃的发展,逐渐形成了庞杂的学科知识体系,与此同时,管理学也涌现了一大批管理科学专家,并在各自的领域中作出了卓越的贡献。利用中国期刊全文数据库(CNKI)2000～2009年的20种管理科学重要期刊文献为数据,从文献计量的角度对我国管理科学十年来的发展进行分析,通过可视化分析工具CiteSpace展示了企业与事业单位管理、管理基础与方法、宏观管理与政策研究三个主要的学科领域的代表人物和研究热点。     

Auditors' Duty of Care to Third Parties: A Comment on Judicial Reasoning Underlying US Cases

Gwilliam (1987) examined UK and Commonwealth legal cases regarding auditors' duty of care to third parties. This article adds an examination of judicial reasoning in precedent-setting US cases deciding duty to third parties. The UK, Commonwealth and US cases indicate that, while pressures to expand duty are not consistent across legal jurisdictions, they do span international jurisdictions and are similarly based on protecting public interests by providing remedy at law rather than protecting the profession's capacity to serve the public.     

Evidence on the Management of Public Services Innovation

Innovation is a central part of the UK Government’s programme to improve public services. However, there is little evidence on how innovation is managed in public service organizations. Drawing upon theories of the management of innovation and longitudinal case studies, this article demonstrates the iterative and complex ways in which innovations unfold. Issues of particular importance in the management of innovation include the role of teams and teamwork, projects, pilots and experiments, and various forms of project management.     

塑造政治人:高校政治学专业培养目标释义

本文从宏观和微观两重视角出发,阐释了政治学专业对于培养人的内在品质与公共价值、公共政治意识、公民品质、公共之善的重要性。指明了我国高校政治学专业培养目标的现状及其面临的诸多问题。并结合当前形式,从教学模式、学校管理、社会需求等方面阐释了其优化路径。     

Public service ethics in a changing world

The past 25 years have seen profound changes in the management and delivery of public services throughout the UK and elsewhere. Such developments, known as New Public Management (NPM) have taken hold, to a greater or lesser extent, in many OECD countries. These developments have had an impact upon the ethics of public service in a number of different ways. This paper explores four themes arising from these developments, i.e. (1) regulatory regimes and performance; (2) changing organisational structures, relationships and partnerships; (3) the public service ethos and (4) individual virtue.The themes are located within a complex set of mutual relationships involving individuals, organisations, government and society. Ethical behaviour will reflect a balance between these relationships, expressed in decisions taken within a ‘problem space’ characteristic of public services.