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Disparate Measures: Public Managers and Performance‐Measurement Strategies
Author(s) -
NicholsonCrotty Sean,
Theobald Nick A.,
NicholsonCrotty Jill
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
public administration review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.721
H-Index - 139
eISSN - 1540-6210
pISSN - 0033-3352
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-6210.2006.00559.x
Subject(s) - scope (computer science) , agency (philosophy) , principal (computer security) , stakeholder , performance measurement , organizational performance , business , test (biology) , politics , measure (data warehouse) , public relations , marketing , computer science , political science , sociology , paleontology , social science , database , law , biology , programming language , operating system
Over the past two decades, many studies have investigated the scope and significance of performance measurement in public organizations. Nonetheless, there is more to learn about the challenges facing public managers who want to measure organizational outputs and use the feedback to improve performance. Specifically, managers are often faced with redundant measures of the same output, each of which may be preferred by a different political principal or stakeholder. Furthermore, a manager's choice of measures can have serious consequences for both the estimation of agency problems and the success of programmatic solutions. We test these assertions in an analysis of educational organizations in Texas. We find that managers’ assessments of organizational performance and decisions regarding solutions depend on the choice of performance measures.