Back to the Future? Performance-Related Pay, Empirical Research, and the Perils of Persistence*

Control Versus Administrative Discretion in Negotiating Voluntary P4P Networks: The Case of Medicaid Accountable Care Organizations

“…The P4P literature has also noted the different fortunes of these initiatives in various substantive policy spheres. For instance, Perry, Engbers, and Jun (2009, pp. 44, 47) generally offer a pessimistic assessment of the efficacy of P4P, but observe that research “conducted in health care settings” tends to cast the approach in a more favorable light.…”

The politics of strategy: why government agencies conduct major strategic reviews

“…Given the expected political benefits of adopting the practices of highly regarded or prominent institutions, it is likely that such practices will continue to spread to agencies and governments seeking to bolster their reputations or political support – regardless of whether the practices are proven to be effective. Such continued diffusion would appear to be akin to the domestic and international diffusion over several decades of public sector pay-for-performance systems, although scholars have found that such systems usually do not work well (Ingraham 1993; Perry et al 2009; Bowman 2010).…”

Closing the Rhetoric‐Reality Gap? Employees' Perspective of Performance Management in the Australian Public Service

“…In light of these expectations, many of the empirical findings on the performance outcomes of performance management schemes September 2015 in the public sector have been disappointing (Bowman 2010;Kellough and Nigro 2002;Mc-Dermott 2006;Perry et al 2009). In their metaanalytic research on performance pay schemes in the United States from 1977 to 2008, Perry et al (2009) noted that despite the occasional successes, these schemes had fallen short of intermediate and long-term expectations. Norman and Gregory's (2003) study of performance management in New Zealand's public sector found that it was disconnected from the 'real work' of employees, which involved interacting with and meeting the needs of citizens.…”

“…In addition, government agencies face judicial and financial limitations (e.g. budget-balancing requirements and judicial mandates), which constrain their capacity to extrinsically reward their employees at a level that matches that of private sector employees (Hirschfeld et al 2002;Perry et al 2009). For example, McDermott's (2006) case study of the Massachusetts Education Reform concluded that the incentives were inadequate for producing the planned outcomes.…”

“…There have been reports of perceptions of unfair treatment, such as unfair administration of the performance appraisal process (Kellough and Nigro 2002;O'Donnell and O'Brien 2000). The schemes have also been criticized for ignoring organizational contextual factors that can affect employee performance when measuring and evaluating performance (den Hartog et al 2004;Perry et al 2009), such as the quality of the managers' skills in managing employee performance (Bowman 2010).…”