دانلود مقاله ISI انگلیسی شماره 8187
ترجمه فارسی عنوان مقاله

چشم انداز سازمانی درباره اندازه گیری عملکرد و مدیریت در بخش دولتی جدید

عنوان انگلیسی
An institutional perspective on performance measurement and management in the ‘new public sector’
کد مقاله سال انتشار تعداد صفحات مقاله انگلیسی
8187 2000 26 صفحه PDF
منبع

Publisher : Elsevier - Science Direct (الزویر - ساینس دایرکت)

Journal : Management Accounting Research, Volume 11, Issue 3, September 2000, Pages 281–306

ترجمه کلمات کلیدی
اندازه گیری عملکرد مدیریت - بخش دولتی جدید - تعادل - یکپارچه سازی - جدا سازی - ذینفعان کلیدی -
کلمات کلیدی انگلیسی
performance measurement of management,new public sector,balance,integration,decoupling,key stakeholders,
پیش نمایش مقاله
پیش نمایش مقاله  چشم انداز سازمانی درباره اندازه گیری عملکرد و مدیریت در بخش دولتی جدید

چکیده انگلیسی

During the 1990s, in what has become known as the ‘new public sector’, many services in advanced economies, such as those of the U.K. and Scandinavia, have come under pressure to become more efficient and effective, so as to reduce their demands on taxpayers, while maintaining the volume and quality of services supplied to the public. To achieve this, they have been subjected to the introduction of various ‘private sector’ management techniques and the frequent adoption of some form of neo-market system in which the purchasers and providers of public services have been split and are frequently required to contract with each other. In this paper, we explore the implications of institutional theory for the successful implementation of multidimensional performance measurement and management in the public sector. In particular, broadening the two-party funders and professional service providers framework of traditional institutional theory to include purchasers of public services allows us to analyse the likely impact of purchaser–provider splits on multidimensional performance measurement systems in the public sector. We show that the differing nature of the interrelationships between these three key stakeholders will influence the extent to which performance measurement in the focal service-provider organizations will be balanced and integrated. We also discuss the influence of these core concepts on the possibilities of achieving some balance between the stakeholder interests examined in the overall control of provider organizations. Five research propositions are advanced, three relating to the relationships between the focal organizations, funders and professional service providers, respectively, and two concerning the focal organization’s links with purchasers. Future empirical research in this area should take the form of longitudinal case studies to track differing paths of development and their effects through time.

مقدمه انگلیسی

The topic of organizational performance measurement has generated much coverage over the years in many disciplines within the private and public sectors. Within the ‘Western world’, the widespread owner–manager split has led to a private sector preoccupation with meeting the information needs of the providers of capital, with a heavy emphasis on accounting information. More recently, it has been accepted that companies do not compete solely on cost and price (Porter, 1980), and the virtues of various types of non-financial information for meeting the needs of stakeholders other than shareholders, such as customers and employees, have been more widely recognized in the development of various multidimensional models for organizational performance measurement (PM: for example, Kaplan and Norton, 1992) and management (Kaplan and Norton, 1996). Within the public sector, the existence and importance of a wider set of stakeholders has long been accepted, but the need for fund-granting bodies to be held accountable to taxpayers has also kept the primary focus on financial information, despite calls for the use of more non-financial information from Mayston (1985) and Pollitt (1986), for example. There is thus a difference of opinion, with some holding that ‘. . . the public sector provides a leading edge on issues of performance measurement’ (Lapsley and Mitchell, 1996, p. 5), while others argue ‘. . . that the performance measurement systemshave measured too many things and the wrong things’ (Atkinson et al., 1997, p. 26), not least because of pressures in public sector organizations to meet the information needs of a large number of stakeholders (Sicotte et al., 1998). Perhaps more important, from the point of view of successful systems implementation, is that most recent advances in the PM literature, originating from private sector practices, have neglected the insights of institutional theory. The upsurge of interest in multidimensional PM in the management accounting literature has been dominated by efforts to design effective systems for this purpose (Fitzgerald et al., 1991; Lynch and Cross, 1991; Kaplan and Norton, 1992). However, comparatively little attention has been paid to the social processes whereby such systems are implemented (Ittner and Larcker, 1998), or how they come to be used in the way they are. The approach guiding previous research is mainly one of rational instrumentalism, hence power relationships and political bargaining processes, studies of which would enhance our understanding of systems implementation and use (Markus and Pfeffer, 1983; Baier et al., 1986), have largely been ignored. This neglect of the insights of institutional theory is particularly unfortunate in a public sector context, since:To further our understanding of how multidimensional performance measurement systems (PMSs) can be used in public sector organizations, it would thus appear appropriate to shift the attention to the power and pressures exerted by different groups of stakeholders and how these affect the use of performance information in organizations. While the list of potential stakeholders influencing public sector organizations can be made very extensive (Pollitt, 1986), DiMaggio and Powell (1983) have argued that the two primary institutional actors in contemporary society are the state and various professions. Ample attention has been paid in the literature to the ‘new public sector’, to the tension between state representatives, such as variousfund-granting bodies, and professions, typically pivoting around the management of financial resources and the problems in melding this with professional values (e.g. Bourn and Ezzamel, 1986; Abernethy and Stoelwinder, 1990; Broadbent et al., 1991; Llewellyn, 1996; Jones and Dewing, 1997). A similar, widely debated topic is the institutional and political processes associated with budgeting (e.g. Wildavsky, 1975; J ¨onsson, 1982; Covaleski and Dirsmith, 1983, 1986). These studies have concentrated on the bargaining processes inherent in public sector budgeting, distinguishing between advocates (e.g. managers at lower levels or representatives for certain professional groups) and guardians (e.g. higher-level, occasionally politically elected, officials representing fund-granting bodies). Although the point about the state and professions as primary institutional actors was recently reiterated by Scott (1995), other institutional theorists (Powell, 1991; Brunsson, 1994) suggest that this analytical framework may need to be broadened to incorporate the competitive forces facing organizations. The changes in the public sector in the 1980s and 1990s have drawn attention to a new, influential category of actors, namely the purchasers of public services. While these may not be labelled ‘institutional actors’ in the conventional sense that their legitimacy is based on some taken for granted norms in society, there are aspects of the diffusion of market-based models, such as purchaser–provider splits and competitive contracting, resembling those of othermarketbased controls being legitimated in terms of some rationalized economic logic (e.g. Brunsson, 1994; Lapsley, 1994; Lindkvist, 1996). However, as explained in this paper, the pressures exerted by purchasersmay be more or less conflicting with those associated with funders and professional employees within the focal provider organization. The extent to which the purchasing function is deregulated and functionally separated from these two constituencies is also likely to affect the level of conflict and the organizational strategies for dealing with various interests. The inclusion of purchasers would thus seem to add an important comparative dimension to our framework, providing a more comprehensive depiction of the complex environment facing many providers of public services as a result of recent reforms. There are also notable international differences in the extent to which market-based models are relied upon in the public sector (Hood, 1995). This suggests that the extent to which the image of public-service provision in the form of markets, rather than the traditional hierarchical arrangements, has been institutionalized is relevant when comparing the emergence of new control practices. Although the infusion of purchasing power into the provision of public services has often been couched in terms of the favouring of client interests, purchasers and beneficiaries of public services need not have identical interests (cf. Goddard, 1992; Llewellyn, 1997). Even though a more clear-cut picture of the conflicts with otherstakeholders might have resulted from a focus on beneficiaries rather than purchasers, prior research indicates that individual beneficiaries are unlikely to have sufficient power to strongly influence the compilation and reporting of performance information in provider organizations (Pollitt, 1986, 1988; Palmer, 1993; Midwinter, 1994). In contrast, larger and more formalized purchasers of services tend to have more direct influence and greater ‘clout’ through the exertion of purchasing power, which has been found to constitute a real source of change in managerial information needs (Bryan and Beech, 1991; Llewellyn, 1993; Ellwood, 1996; Ballantine et al., 1998). It was thus judged appropriate to limit the discussion to the interests of purchasers.

نتیجه گیری انگلیسی

This paper has attempted to provide an alternative perspective on multidimensional PM, grounded in institutional theory, to the approach dominating the growing literature on this topic. The relevance of doing so in the context of the ‘new public sector’ is justified by the complex interrelationships between multiple stakeholders and the intensely political nature of decision-making in public sector organizations. Recognizing the institutional pressures associated with the three groups of stakeholders considered in this paper provides an explanation for the actual integration and balance between different performance measures within organizations providing public services. In this respect, our approach goes beyond the relatively simplistic assumptions underpinning much literature on multidimensional PM, which has typically ignored or regarded as largely unproblematic the institutional and political processes inherent in systems implementation. It is hoped that the research propositions advanced in this paper may be a useful starting point for empirical inquiries examining the dynamics inherent in the interplay between the three stakeholder interests.However, a few remarks regarding our use of institutional perspectives may be worth considering for students setting out to test and refine our emerging institutional theory of PMS design and implementation. While institutional theorists have tended to emphasize the adaptive nature of organizational behaviour, we acknowledge the need to complement this with a viewof management as an intentional and pro-active agent. However, it is important to clearly distinguish managerial choice from organizational change. As recent advances in institutional theory illustrate, change and stability co-exist and frequently give rise to organizational paradoxes (Czarniawska and Sev´on, 1996). One such paradox hinted at in this paper is that pro-active managerial attempts to balance conflicting stakeholder interests through de-coupling (as reflected by Propositions 3 and 5) may induce organizational stability rather than change, as this offers an opportunity to reduce or divert claims for more far-reaching changes, while allowing management to appear to engage in serious change efforts. The rationale for this is that de-coupling may be seen as an attempt to maintain some rough equilibrium between inconsistent norms (Meyer, 1996). In contrast, the scope for such ‘hypocritical’ managerial tactics is likely to be more limited where change is imposed on organizations in a more coercive manner (as reflected by Propositions 1, 2 and 4). In such circumstances, shifting PM practices may seem to follow a more deterministic model of change, which management may draw on to justify change initiatives (e.g. motivating new PM practices as a ‘necessary evil’). We would argue that studies of managerial choice constitute a useful starting point for analysing how PM practices change in highly institutionalized settings, such as the public sector (cf. Abernethy and Chua, 1996). To unravel paradoxes such as those outlined above, empirical inquiries should combine this with an analysis ofinstitutional constraints, but might also need to extend the discussion to consider the inherently inter-subjective aspects associated with different actors’ interpretations of stability and change in PM practices. A limitation of our discussion is that little attention is paid to the formation and interpretation of managerial choices in line with contemporary social constructivist thought (Czarniawska and Sev´on, 1996). Future empirical investigations should venture further to gain a deeper understanding of the rationales for managerial tactics, and so enrich the analysis of their interplay with the organization’s institutional environment. Managerial choices are not always explicit (they may even be subconscious), and studying these may require a view ofPerformance Measurement and Management in the New Public Sector 301 management as a less detached actor, deeply involved in the continuous process of translating ideas into action and back into ideas, some of which become embedded in the organizational fabric and thus institutionalized (Czarniawska and Joerges, 1996). Managerial responses to changes in the institutional environment follow a cyclical pattern (Beckert, 1999; Crossan et al., 1999), where managers themselves influence the process of institutionalization through their interactions with such environments. An interpretive and preferably longitudinal case study approach would thus seem to be a useful research strategy, adding ‘flesh’ to the theoretical ‘skeleton’ advanced in this paper. Another reason for adopting a case-study approach is that the core concepts of integration and balance in PMS design and use are complex phenomena that may require intensive studies of the intended and actual use of various performance measures for different purposes. This probably defies traditional empirical tests exclusively based on statistical methods. Even though it may be possible to develop quantifiable constructs reflecting the balance and integration between different performance dimensions, these concepts are likely to be deeply embedded in the context of PMSs. It has been argued that the properties of institutional environments are difficult to define a priori and need to be identified through close empirical examination (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). A fruitful research strategy in this respect might be to compare changes in PM usein specific decision-making contexts pertaining to different groups of stakeholders, such as pricing and contract negotiation, reporting to funding bodies and disclosure of information to groups of professional staff, as well as adopting a more holistic approach.