Beyond the Managerial Model: The Case for Broadening Performance Assessment in Government and the Public Services

Abstract

One does not have to dig too deep into the mass of recent documentation about improving management in the public services sector to see the bureaucracy of the future. The department of the future will have a clear set of strategic objectives. Within it each division and section will have its own objectives, more detailed, of course, but directly related to the overall strategy. Each individual manager will work to an annually renegotiated set of personal targets, performance against which will figure as an important factor in hidher superiors' decisions about merit pay increases, promotion and training. More staff than in the past will be employed on term contracts -the concept of a lifetime career in public service will become less common. Specialist skills, in particular, will be 'bought in' for specific projects. A sophisticated system of activity costing will encourage keen awareness of resource use at all levels in the hierarchy. Financial responsibility will be more dispersed than has been common in central or local government in the past. 'Cost centres' will be widely used, with senior management more concerned with maintaining and developing control systems than with approving specific decisions. Personnel management responsibility will also have to be decentralized, and line management will be expected to seek those combinations of all resources which yield the best value for the taxpayer's money. All this would be underpinned by computerized information systems.It is this vision of the future that shines out from many of the official publications cited throughout the remainder of this article. Compared with what is known of the past, it is an impressive conception. Dynamic, performanceoriented management assumes centre stage, displacing older traditions of rulefollowing generalist administration. The author however, wishes to argue that the emerging 'new managerialism' has thus far been conceived in dangerously narrow terms. To show this, one of the central concepts in the management model -that of 'performance', will be examined more closely.

Integrating Financial Management and Performance Management

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Newcastle City Council and the grassroots: accountability and budgeting under austerity

“…The uses of budgets during the move from public administration to new public management helped constitute citizens as active consumers and established efficiency as a key category of legitimate government (Hopwood, 1984;Pollitt, 1986Pollitt, , 1993Hood, 1991Hood, , 1995. Some referred to the changes as new public financial management (Humphrey et al, 1993) to emphasise the dependence of new public management on accounting-based technologies.…”

Balancing the balanced scorecard for a New Zealand mental health service

“…Despite these difficulties, the public service has to be able to demonstrate to the taxpayers effectiveness, efficiency, economy, availability, access, extensiveness, acceptability, quality, fairness, degree of equity, predictability and degree of democratic control. 16 Development of indicators that will be accepted and used by staff need to follow the same path as for any changemanagement process. We need to involve staff, provide as much information as is possible, and look for the champions in the service who can be influential in the various teams so that they can be a positive leader in the development of indicators.…”