Praxis of Performance Management in the Public Domain

The idea for this ebook started at the panel The Praxis of Performance Management in Public Services of the XV International Research Society for Public Management Conference. As a consequence papers were invited on all aspects of the practice of performance management in public services, but authors were asked to take specific account of the rationale arising from the work of Bouckaert and Halligan (B&H) (2008). In their synthesis of extensive comparative research on the management of performance, they distinguish between different levels of consolidation and integration of measurement, incorporation and use of performance to explain the evolution of performance management in the public sector. They identify a sequence of phases: Performance Administration, Managements of Performances and Performance Management, pointing further to the emergence of a fourth archetype: Performance Governance. Their review was based on six country-focused case studies, with a mixture of Anglo-Saxon and northern European countries. We know less of what is happening in other countries, despite a growing multi-polarity, as the emergence of BRIC countries indicates.