1. The Rationality of Control
Dr Rodney Dormer Victoria University of Wellington
What information do managers use and how do they
use it?
2. Concepts of Performance
It seems reasonable to suggest that, following an (ongoing)
series of reforms of public management practices,
concepts of performance have become dominated by a
rational economic discourse that emphasises:
•objectivity – and facts
•rationality – and targets and control
•transparency – and evidence
•economy, efficiency, and effectiveness – and
products, consumers and customers
Dr Rodney Dormer Victoria University of Wellington
3. The theoretical approaches that shaped new public
management models of public sector management in
the late 1980s and early 1990s reflect the measurement
principles of scientific management whereby resources
(inputs) and final goods and services (outputs) are
viewed as being objectively defined and measured so as
to control and optimise the economy and efficiency of
each agency’s work.
Measuring the immeasurable
4. However, this instrumental approach to the
measurement and management of performance has
been criticised by those who perceive the work of public
sector managers as being less concerned with rational
decision making and more an exercise in:
•“muddling through” (Lindblom, 1955) or
•“management by groping along” (Behn 1988).
Measuring the immeasurable
5. “Nowadays, everything is measured, including highly
ambiguous phenomena like well-being, social cohesion,
crime and safety. In this world of measurement,
phenomena are turned into crisp facts and figures,
states of affairs can be assessed and comparisons with
earlier, other, or imagined states of affairs can be made.
By improving ‘numerical capture’, it is assumed,
phenomena like well-being can be improved. “
(Noordegraaf, 2008).
Measuring the immeasurable
6. “Measurement in the public sector is less about
precision and more about increasing understanding
and knowledge”
[Mayne, 1999]
Measuring the immeasurable
7. Objective representation occurs in situations where a
formal logic or “scientific calculus” can be applied.
This occurs, for example, in a “production”
organisational environment (Wilson, 1989) in which
work done and the results of the work may be
observed, and goals and means-ends relationships
are well defined and able to be monitored.
Such an environment facilitates specific and
quantitative measurement.
Objective representation
8. Subjective representation is socially constructed
through social interaction, based on shared values,
norms and goals.
Rather than quantitative information, it employs
anecdote, narrative and direct observation. This
applies, for example, in organisational environments in
which means-ends relationships are not clearly
defined (as in Wilson’s (1989) “coping” organisational
environment), and the final goods or services are
highly variable.
In such environments performance is benchmarked
against professional standards and normative
frameworks (OECD, 2000).
Subjective representation
9. We might expect a tension between the use of
subjectively framed local knowledge for local decision
making and the standardisation and objectification of
that knowledge for purposes of upward accountability
and control
However, recent research has showed that at the local
level managers rely heavily on objectively quantified
information and managers at the national level are not
averse to picking up the ‘phone to find out what is really
going on.
What information do managers use?
10. The use of narrative in sensemaking
“… most models of organisation are based on
argumentation rather than narration, yet most
organisational realities are based on narration “
(Weick, 1995)
“… given mankind’s propensity for inductive
generalisation, noteworthy experiences will often
become the empirical basis for rules of thumb,
proverbs, and other guides to conduct”
(Robinson, 1981)
11. Beware “the narrative fallacy”
Narrative is used to impose order on, and make sense
of, the confusing mass of information with which we are
confronted.
However, we use narrative to select from, and thereby
reduce down, that mass of information. What we select
is often the most dramatic or spectacular events or
factors – despite the fact that those events or factors
may not be representative of the complexity and reality
of the whole.
12. Beware “the narrative fallacy”
“The explanatory stories that people find compelling are
simple; are concrete rather than abstract; assign a
larger role to talent, stupidity and intentions than to luck;
and focus on a few striking events that happen rather
than on the countless events that fail to happen.
We humans constantly fool ourselves by constructing
flimsy accounts of the past and believing they are true.”
(Kahneman, 2011)
13. A Divergent Rationality ?
“… the growing use of business and managerial
terminology in child welfare has tended to create a gulf
between those who direct practice and those
responsible for managing systems of child welfare”
(Connolly, 2007, p.835)
“… the dangers of increasing reliance on procedures,
guidelines and targets that routinise social work practice
to make it quantifiable, thereby undermining professional
autonomy, attending to organisational rather than client
goals and downplaying the non-measurable aspects of
performance.”
(Tilbury, 2007, p.119).
14. Outcomes
Outputs
Inputs
Processes/Activities
Congruent
Objectives
To use our resources
appropriately and efficiently
To produce the right things
To produce sufficient
quantity and of the right
quality
To be effective in terms
of making a difference
Technical
Functions
Institutional
Functions
To manage and retain
limited resources
Managerial
Functions
OBJECTIVE FUNCTIONFOCUS
A Performance Measurement and Management Framework
15. Institutional Functions - are concerned with enabling managers
to provide “evidence that the organisation is meeting standards or
engaging in activities that confer legitimacy on it” (Kanter &
Summers 1989).
Managerial Functions - are the domain of operational managers
and are primarily focused on outputs and processes. They are
primarily concerned with structure and process corrections and
internal resource allocations.
Technical Functions - focus on process and inputs, the
efficiency with which inputs are used and the quality of the
resulting products or services. This is the domain of Lipsky’s
(1980) “street-level bureaucrat” who operates in a world of vague
policy goals and insufficient resources.
A Performance Measurement and Management Framework
16. Performance Measurement and Management
Functions In Use
National Regional Local Average National Regional Local Average National Regional Local Average National Regional Local Average
Institutional
Functions
50% 50% 13% 37% 38% 30% 25% 31% 59% 66% 47% 58% 56% 69% 40% 54%
Managerial
Functions
30% 27% 20% 26% 8% 20% 0% 9% 11% 4% 3% 6% 5% - 13% 7%
Technical
Functions
20% 24% 67% 37% 54% 50% 75% 60% 30% 30% 50% 37% 39% 32% 47% 39%
Total 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
PERCENTAGE OF ISSUES MENTIONED
Work and Income Public Prisons Service Community Probation Service CYF
17. The Rationality of Control
The rationality of control represents the underlying
logic and mechanisms by which organisational
performance is understood and managed.
18. Measurable Work and
Results
Measurable Work and
Results
Representation
Objective/Subjective
Representation
Objective/Subjective
Rationality
Formal/Substantive
Rationality
Formal/Substantive
Regulative Control/Shared Understandings
[tight/loose coupling of frameworks]
Regulative Control/Shared Understandings
[tight/loose coupling of frameworks]
The Rationality of Control
19. Measurable Work and Results
Inputs, Processes, Outputs or Outcomes ?
Where both outputs and outcomes are unobservable
there is likely to be a high degree of conflict between
managers and operators in public agencies, especially
those that must cope with a clientele not of their own
choosing.
(Wilson, 1989, p.169)
“We monitor the activity that we know will contribute
to positive results.”
(CYF regional 8).
20. “There are some simple things you need to do every month
… these are key things around the practice that we’re
monitoring. A fair number of the reports are based around
timeliness of completion of the task … the more frequently
people get it done on time that becomes embedded; and
then the quality of the work will probably improve as well.”
(CYF national 4)
“What I monitor is work coming in the door weekly. Whether
we’re meeting those timeframes daily – traffic lights.”
(CYF regional 5)
Measurable Work and Results
Inputs, Processes, Outputs or Outcomes ?
21. “ I’d love to talk to you about performance
against outcomes, but we’re not there yet ”
“Our measures largely, in terms of the public domain, have
reflected timeliness - of getting to things and completing
things, rather than a set of measures that actually go to the
core of the organisation which is about improving young
people’s lives. As though if you measured every step of the
process and the process was done perfectly, then the lives
would be improved.”
(CYF national 2)
“a workforce that has never worked against measures”
(CYF national 4).
22. Performance ‘Dark Matter’
“We don’t capture everything that a Case Manager
does which can be highly frustrating. Like, they can
have someone that comes on the books today and
they can work with them intensively and then they
go and get their own job. You can not capture that
stuff. Case managers would have a feeling that
there’s a lot of stuff that they do that’s important that
we don’t capture.”
(Local manager in a public service department)
23. Objective and/or Subjective
Representation ?
“I can look at all the data I want in the world … but it’s
whether I think that people are making the right judgements.
Is it my judgement that they are all trying to do a good job?
Are they all trying to do the very best? Are they all mindful of
the things that I consider important?”
(CYF external 9)
“The monthly report uses measures such as getting court
reports completed on time and other important aspects of
activity that give us a level of confidence that things are
being managed. “
(CYF regional 8)
24. Formal and/or Substantive Rationality ?
“…if managers really understood the power information can
give to a manager, how it can really open your eyes to let
you know what is going on and really enable you to be a
really successful manager, we’d have a lot more successful
people. “
(CYF local 7)
25. “We know how many kids you’ve got coming through; we
know what you’re forecasting. You’ve got the social workers,
you’ve got the financial plan cost money. You’ve absolutely
got enough money to do the job.”
(CYF national 4)
“The KPIs [key performance indicators] don’t input to good
practice. They don’t tell us a story about good practice. …
KPIs are just inputs into something else. I never tell anyone
off for missing KPIs. I think it’s how you manage people to
understand what it is they have to do in order to get them –
why it’s important – and get that internalised and people will
accept it.”
(CYF local 7)
Formal and/or Substantive Rationality ?
26. “[S]ocial workers want to have “caring, sharing, loving
relationships with their clients.”
(CYF local 6).
“We’re working with people who have problems, but they also
have a significant emotional edge around all of this. We’re
talking about people’s kids.”
(CYF regional 8)
“The chief social worker’s office has advisors that can actually
go out and informally sniff around and check things out. You
may never see a report on it but what happens is there will be
verbal briefings about what is happening and the solutions
that need to be put in place. So that’s sort of like the informal
way - it’s sort of like gut feelings.”
(CYF national 1)
Formal and/or Substantive Rationality ?
27. An integrated set of performance measures
cascading down from government priorities, to
Ministers’ purchase decisions, to the specification of
managers’ objectives at each level of the
organisation.
or
“Symbolic action” and “pseudo control” ?
Formal and/or Substantive Rationality ?
28. Carrier Example
Formal rules and procedures Regulative Controls Job descriptions and manuals
Routines Reporting cycles
Artifacts
Computer systems
Uniforms and desk calendars
Social networks of roles and
positions
Rank
Community relationships
Media relationships
Shared understandings and
logics of action
Cultural/Cognitive
Controls
Team briefs
Professional cultures
Institutional Carriers and Framework Decoupling
29. Formal Rules and Procedures
Formal rules and procedures exist in all of the
agencies studied and act as a regulative mechanism
by which performance management frameworks are
communicated and reinforced. These rules and
procedures are usually contained in documents
such as the manuals which an interviewee from one
agency described as “our bible, basically”
30. Formal Rules and Procedures
… a lot of the things we’re looking at there are the
reasons people end up getting fired at that level; do
they follow the rules?
(Local Manager)
… how does anybody know what our success is if
we don’t have procedures to follow?
(National Manager)
31. Routines
Learning “the tricks of the trade” in reporting is
important because:
“Assumptions are formed, whether you like it or not,
and they aren’t necessarily an accurate reflection of
what’s happening. … So every brownie point you
can receive is well worth it – it helps you survive
within the organisation and enables you to keep your
focus on what it is you really want to achieve.”
(Local Manager)
32. Artefacts
“The CYRAS computer system is getting bigger, and bigger,
and bigger. … It is so, so big now. To start a new social
worker they say it takes a good two years for someone to
learn CYRAS well. At the rate we’re going it’s going to take
four years!”
(Local Manager).
A lot of people don’t know what they should be recording
and how to do it … it’s my view that we spend hours and
hours recording lots and lots of things we don’t need to know
anything about.
(Local Manager)
33. Social Networks of Roles and Procedures
“We are very aware that we can’t do what we want to do
in isolation, [without] building collaborative relationships
across sectors [and] government departments; but also,
certainly, within our communities. “
(Local Manager)
“We’ve let them into the organisation; we’ve had them in
our residences; all sorts of things. I think that’s given us
more room. Instead of saying we’re protecting our
position, I haven’t been defensive about it. I’ve said, ‘of
course we can’t manage those difficult kids, who can?’
and they say, ‘OK, it’s difficult, isn’t it.’ “
(Local Manager)
34. “… to work in Child, Youth and Family, I mean I
have a social work background, my whole being in
this organisation is about improving services to
families.”
(Local Manager)
Shared Understandings and Logics of
Action
35. “I commissioned somebody outside the organisation to
come in and do intensive supervisory management work
with all the supervisors within the [area]. That’s 15 staff
members. And some of these supervisors didn’t even
know what our organisational structure looked like.
They didn’t know the implications of working for a
government department and that we were accountable
to a Minister - those types of things. So it really opened
our eyes to what we expected, or perceived, that they
would know, that they didn’t know.”
(Local Manager)
Shared Understandings and Logics of
Action
36. … they just missed out on some really good systems
and some tricks of the trade - you know, how you
survive. So simple things such as you’re going to
assign a social worker to do an investigation. So
which one are you going to choose out of the one’s
that you haven’t actually done. You may as well do
the one with 8 kids in as opposed to the one with one
child in because that will knock off 8 KPI in one hit as
opposed to one; where the presenting of information
is pretty much the same. That sort of thing had never
occurred to them.
(Local Manager)
Shared Understandings and Logics of
Action
37. … every brownie point you can receive it’s well worth
it - it helps you survive within the organisation and
enable you to keep your focus on what it is you really
want to achieve.
(Local Manager)
Shared Understandings and Logics of
Action
39. The de-coupling of formal and in use performance
measurement and management frameworks will become
more difficult as the institutional framework moves from
being more regulative to being more cultural/cognitive.
“The implementation of an institutional practice is
symbolic, or decoupled, if it is not integrated into the
management and organization processes”
(Dillard, Rigsby and Goodman 2004)
Congruence or
closing the management loop?
40. The symbolic nature of management
information
There is an assumption that during the decision making
process managers will gain and analyse information in a
timely and intelligent manner as long as its marginal cost
is less than its incremental value.
However, in practice it would appear that managers do
not carefully weigh the reliability, precision and relevance
of information. Instead they collect and process more
information than they could usefully use for decision
making.
41. The symbolic nature of management
information
One suggested reason is that the information has a
symbolic value, demonstrating the organisation’s
commitment to rational decision making.
More information leads to better decisions.
Thus gathering information demonstrates a manager’s
broad commitment to reason and rational choice; as does
the manager’s bulging briefcase and laptop computer.
42. The symbolic nature of management
information
Management accounting information may therefore be
used to construct a reality that is:
•a defensive image of having followed the most
competent path of gathering all the available information
before making a decision;
•an offensive tactic involving a false reality for others,
under the assumption that other managers are doing the
same; or
•a ritualistically created image of being a follower of
rational choice
43. UNCERTAINTY OF OBJECTIVES OF ACTION
UNCERTAINTYOFCONSEQUENCESOFACTION
LESS MORE
MORE
Answer Machine Ammunition Machine
Learning Machine Rationalisation Machine
(based on Burchall et al 1980)
The Role of Management Information
44. Answer Machine
If the objectives and consequences of action are not
uncertain, the accounting information works as an
answer machine. This is an ideal situation where
algorithms, formulae and rules can be derived to solve
problems by computation.
It represents the default
situation assumed in many
dominant views of what role
accounting information plays
in organisations. Decision
making occurs via
computation.
45. Ammunition Machine
Where there is uncertainty over the means to be used
to reach an objective accounting information plays the
role of an answer machine used by different parties to
support their arguments.
Where means ends
relationships are less clear
decision making is more of a
political process involving
bargaining and compromise.
46. Learning Machine
If objectives are relatively clear but how to achieve
them is not, accounting plays the role of a learning
machine
Decision making occurs via
judgement involving ad hoc
analysis, what if models and
sensitivity analysis
47. Rationalisation Machine
If both the objectives and the means to achieve them
are uncertain, accounting information is used as a
rationalisation machine by which actions are justified
after they have been taken.
Decision making involves
inspiration as rationales for
action emerge in the decision
making process itself.
48. What is accounted for shapes what people see as
important.
Accounting systems are most certainly implicated in
the design and functioning of organisations as we
know them.
(Burchell et al, 1980)
The Behavioural Aspects of Management
Accounting Systems
49. The Role of Management Information
What role does management information play in your
organisation?
50. Summary
The nature of the work undertaken and the results of
that work may not always be able to be predetermined
and subsequently monitored.
The performance measures that are used may also
reflect the predictability and consistency of the
organisational production processes.
In practice, managers at all levels within public sector
organisations use a combination of both objective
(calculation-based) and subjective (socially constructed)
information.
Summary
51. These paradoxes reflect the tensions that create
divisions between the formal and in use models.
Integrating those models requires the inclusion of the
more subjectively framed information and substantive
rationality that is employed by decision makers both
within and outside of public service agencies.
Summary
52. It also requires an approach to the development and
application of nationally defined models that is based on
culturally embedded shared understanding and an
acknowledgement that:
“Measurement in the public sector is less about
precision and more about increasing understanding and
knowledge. “
(Mayne, 1999)
Summary
53. Conclusions
i. How performance is managed is determined by how
performance is defined by the actors involved (i.e.
agency staff managers and stakeholders).
ii. How performance is defined is determined by:
a. the prior experience and expectations of the
actors involved; and
b. the sensegiving activities of internal
management and external stakeholders.
iii. Those actors use both objectively and subjectively
framed information.
54. iv. They apply that information via both a formal and a
substantive rationality.
v. The espoused model by which the performance of
public service agencies is managed takes too little
account of the use of subjectively framed
information and substantive rationality.
vi. The regulative application of the formally espoused
model supports the loose-coupling (if not the
decoupling) of the performance management
frameworks used for internal decision making from
that used for purposes of external accountability.
Conclusions
Editor's Notes
More simply – the reality of organisational performance can be represented objectively and uncertainty resolved by collecting more and/or better data.
a different understanding of the nature of reality grounds a different perspective on the nature and limits of representation. When social reality is understood in terms of ambiguity or equivocality (cf. Feldman 1989; March and Olsen 1989; Weick 1995; Stone 2002 [1997]), one and the same ‘real’ event, situation, or signal will have multiple meanings, so an objectified representation will logically be impossible.
When this is the case, real events, situations or signals will be surrounded by ‘interpretative spaces’ (cf. Noordegraaf and Abma 2003) that call for, yet resist interpretative closure. This does not mean that issues lack tangible and objective sides, nor that ‘facts’ are absent – it does mean that these tangible sides and facts do not speak for themselves.
(Noordegraaf, 2008).
While measurement and analytical techniques are not discounted they are given less emphasis in favour of the inclusion of other forms of knowledge such as previous experience and ‘gut feeling’.
Hyndman and Eden (2001) also criticise the use of a “rational management model” to improve performance in the public sector on the grounds that:
the expectation that management has the skill and time to operate such a model is misplaced;
'rationalist' models often over-emphasise quantitative performance measures at the expense of qualitative and strategic factors as elements of the decision-making process; and
its tendency to ignore the political and cultural context in which decision making takes place.
Performance is viewed as an objective reality that is able to be measured and managed through the use of scorecards, performance rankings, benchmarking, cost-benefit ratios, etc.
This means ‘something else’ is needed to make it work, i.e. to make performance measurement meaningful for parties involved. In order to understand how this happens, the article will focus on one critical example of inevitable, yet impossible numerical capture, namely the numerical objectification of safety and ‘liveability’ in the Dutch city of Rotterdam. It will present an in-depth reconstruction of how safety measurement
became meaningful through political and administrative action.
In the context of complex environments and imperfect information, measurement mechanisms that use calculation orientated models of cause and effect may need to be supplemented by a more substantive rationality that employs more subjective forms of information such as narrative.
(What constitutes reality, then, depends on concepts, categories, and causal stories, used by those who try to make sense of equivocal events and signals, as well as what concept, categories and causal stories are routinized and become dominant, if not hegemonic.”
(Noordegraaf, 2008).
Inductive generalisation – from the specific to the general
e.g. no evidence of black swans = no black swans
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2010). ‘The Black Swan’
Amongst social work professionals, in New Zealand as in other countries, disquiet remains about the relationship between the formal model of public sector performance management and that employed by social work staff.
To simplify these definitional issues we may conceive of a simple performance measurement framework that extends from
the basic management of inputs (such as the number of staff employed or the amount of money spent on stationery), through
the processes that consume those inputs (such as conducting interviews with unemployed beneficiaries),
the outputs or goods and services produced by those processes (such as placing people in jobs), and
the outcomes or impacts of those outputs (for example that associated with reducing rates of unemployment).
A each level in this framework different questions may be asked for different purposes and, if it is accepted that responsibility must be related to those factors over which managers have at least some control, different responsibilities may be ascribed to each level. This implies that different sets of performance measures, related to the different activities and goals, are applied at each level but, if the organisation as a whole is to perform effectively, the underlying objectives need to be congruent throughout the framework.
In fact, the research found that:
the suggested hierarchical division of functional focus does not apply; and
the congruence in underlying objectives was not always present.
Interviewees from Work and Income indicated that the agency’s activities are fairly evenly divided between institutional and technical functions with rather less emphasis on managerial functions. As suggested by Kanter and Summers (1994), and reflecting Mintzberg’s (1997) findings in Parks Canada, interviewees at the national and regional levels of Work and Income were primarily concerned with institutional functions. However, this focus was not evident in the comments of interviewees from the other two agencies.
Interviewees from Child, Youth and family Services placed a clear emphasis on the institutional function of Organisation. This may well reflect a climate of ongoing organisational change following the, relatively recent, appointment of a new Chief Executive (i.e. Deputy Chief Executive Child, Youth and Family Services) and the merging of the agency into the Ministry of Social Development.
In the Public Prisons Service the principal focus of comments by interviewees from all three organisational levels related to technical functions and, in particular, to those associated with (i) Managing Safe, Secure and Humane Confinement and (ii) the Rehabilitation and Reintegration of Offenders. Few comments were made in respect of managerial functions apart from those by a Regional Manager who suggested that the agency could play a more active role in Managing Broader Social Issues.
Similarly at variance with the functional separation suggested by Kanter and Summers (1994) and also with the Public Prisons Service, interviewees from the Community Probation Service from national and regional levels provided function related comments that focused primarily on institutional functions (in particular, Managing the Organisation and Managing External Accountabilities). However, those at the local level made statements that, other than those associated with Managing the Organisation, reflected a primary focus on technical functions (in particular, Providing Reports to Other Agencies and Managing Rehabilitation and Reintegration).
How, then, may we understand the rationality of control within individual agencies?
Three related themes that emerged from the research help explain the characteristics which represent the rationality of control within each agency.
It is an often repeated cliché to suggest that one size (or performance measurement and management model) does not fit all (agencies). In this context, the framework suggested by Wilson (1989) which categorise organisations as either ‘production’, ‘procedural’, ‘craft’ or ‘coping’ (depending on the extent to which an organisation’s work and its results are observable and measurable) has been widely quoted. Indeed, one of the major criticisms of the New Zealand’s public sector reforms of the late 1980s is that they treated all public sector agencies as if they are production organisations in which work can be both specified in advance and its results subsequently clearly identified and measured (Gregory 1995b). However, this typology has been somewhat simplistically used to interpret management practices, despite Wilson’s own warning that it is a “crude device” representing four extreme cases. The current research has found that (at least the case study) agencies do not simply display the characteristics of one of the four archetypes but may, for example, display the characteristics of both production and craft or coping and procedural organisations.
At the “front end of the business”, i.e. the regional and local levels, the importance of managing process was stressed. A regional level a manager explained that measuring performance in the context of social work practice is difficult and therefore, “we monitor the activity that we know will contribute to positive results” (CYF regional 8).
Another national level manager described a focus on “outcome drivers … that will drive our bottom line performance” and explained:
They’re the activities that you absolutely need. For instance to get someone to Court they have to have done a number of things. So you’ll take two or three of those things - to get staffed focused on what it is we were doing we were saying they are the activities you have to have achieved and then the outcome is a successful presentation at Court. So if you’ve done those things you’ll get the outcome. So it’s leading towards an outcome focus. (CYF national 4)
Similarly at the regional level an interviewee explained how, at a regional and site level, (s)he checks “how we’re doing, where we’re not meeting timeframes, what needs to happen to make sure we are” (CYF regional 5). Also at the local level, an interviewee explained how (s)he regularly reviewed the case management system (CYRAS) to check on key processes. (S)he stated:
Every month I spend probably six to eight hours looking at children in care, just satisfying myself that what I expect to be happening is happening” (CYF local 7).
(S)he provided an example of the requirement for social workers to consult with the Police in advance of taking any action in respect of a notification of child abuse or serious neglect that, (s)he discovered was not being complied with.
A national office manager suggested that the agency has “a workforce that has never worked against measures” (CYF national 4).
As might be expected, in part performance information is managed at the local and regional levels for what are perceived to be national office reporting requirements. A number of interviewees suggested that these formal reporting requirements do not capture all of the work of local staff. There is a performance ‘dark matter’, not visible to regional and national level managers, but nonetheless seen at the local level as an important component of their work. Interviewees at that level, therefore, described the use of manual systems and spreadsheets to record work that would otherwise not be taken into account in performance management and resourcing decisions.
Scepticism in respect of the formal and objectively represented framework was expressed by an interviewee from the Community Probation Service who suggested that it is possible to meet the standard performance criteria and only partially achieve the necessary result.
Dillard et al (2004) define representation as “the way reality is framed or symbolically described” and suggest that this occurs along a continuum extending from being more objective to being more subjective in nature.
Monthly league tables and coffee with the social workers.
Note the emphasis on objective representation, particularly at the national level. Locally there is an increased use of more subjectively formed performance information.
As noted earlier the idea that performance can be measured and managed through calculation-orientated, empirically-based knowledge underpins many of the changes to the formal model of public sector management in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These changes were based on theories that stressed the use of formal rational models that employ standardised and value neutral performance information. Dillard et al (2004) suggest that in such models:
… the representational schemes would be expected to contain concrete, quantitatively measurable elements. The representational context relates to finding “the” answer or specifying “the” norms and values as well as articulating processes that attain “the” goal. (Dillard et al, 2004).
However, as a number of commentators have pointed out, public sector managers must frequently manage a number of, potentially conflicting, goals [1] in the context of an imperfect knowledge of the consequences of their actions (Lipsky, 1980; Behn, 1988; Boston et al 1996). The limited information, cognitive ability and time available to decision-makers results in the desired optimal solutions being displaced by satisfactory solutions (Simon, 1957) based on the available information and an existing set of expectations and values (Weick, 1995). Notwithstanding the theoretical underpinnings of the initial reforms of New Zealand’s public sector the performance of many public sector organisations, particularly those in the core public service, is therefore evaluated on the basis of a substantive rationality, that is “ends orientated, associated with ethics, values and actions that promote the ends implied therein” (Dillard et al, 2004, p.518). Such values-based, substantive models are also orientated towards demonstrating equity or fairness rather than simply economy and efficiency.
___________________________________________[1] A recent Treasury survey of public service chief executives and chief financial officers showed that a critical financial risk for Chief Executives over the next three years is management of conflicting priorities (76% rated this moderate to high). Conflicting priorities primarily refer to the tensions between Ministerial decisions alongside issues such as managing day-to-day cost escalations and maintaining a focus on long-term goals with the former two impacting on the ability to do the latter. (Treasury, 2009)
A national level interviewee stressed the importance of “activity monitors”, such as the number of notifications of child neglect or abuse received or the number of Family Group Conferences held, and stated:
If you want to measure how well our organisation is actually doing in performing its statutory requirements which is around care and protection, and YJ, we look at this sort of stuff. (CYF national 1)
In Child, Youth and Family Services formal rules and procedures play a more limited role. While the activities of its social workers are framed by specific legislation, from which the agency’s process-based indicators have been derived, at a more detailed level, Child, Youth and Family Services’ nationally defined practice framework provides guidance rather than specific rules as to what should be done and when.
In Child, Youth and Family Services formal rules and procedures play a more limited role. While the activities of its social workers are framed by specific legislation, from which the agency’s process-based indicators have been derived, at a more detailed level, Child, Youth and Family Services’ nationally defined practice framework provides guidance rather than specific rules as to what should be done and when.
The monthly reporting cycle
Clinical supervision
Wednesday team brief
Artifacts are physical and technical objects which are given shape by human action but which also, through a process of reification assume a role that both enables and constrains human action.
For example:
computer systems
wall posters
desk calendars
computer screen savers
In this context the interviewee related the story of “Billy’s chips” in which a social worker had recorded the fact that she had received a phone call from a client asking if he could have some chips and on the next day recorded another phone call in which Billy said he had not yet received his chips!
Social networks create patterned expectations that both “constrain and empower the behaviour of actors at the same time as they are reproduced and transferred by this behaviour” (Scott, 2001, p.79). These networks may be more or less structured depending on the degree of formality of those relationships and the clarity of the goals to which they are orientated (Scott, 1987). Therefore the nature of performance measurement frameworks and the relationships between them are affected by the strength of networks of social positions and roles which are, in turn, affected by the stability of the organisational environment.
‘Organisational performance’ is, therefore, seen as a product of social interaction and shared experience and cognitive frameworks.
This approach adopts the epistemology of social constructionism, which is defined by Crotty (1998) as:
… the view that all knowledge, and therefore all meaningful reality as such, is contingent on human practices, being constructed in and out of interaction between human beings and their world, and developed and transmitted within an essential social world. (p.42)
A social constructionist thus understands human knowledge as emerging from human interactions with the world and other people within the world. While that world, in an absolute sense, remains ‘out there’, truth or meaning does not; rather, meaning is created by different people in different ways depending on how they interact with the world and with each other. The meanings people give to the world and their interactions with it are neither consistent nor constant; they emerge as a consequence of ongoing interactions which will vary between different groups of people and in different circumstances. They are dynamic, in that meanings are reinterpreted as new or changed experiences differ from those of the past and challenge existing sense-making frameworks. Social constructionism is, therefore, also relativist in that it recognises that at different times, and at different places there have been, and are, very different interpretations of the same phenomenon (Crotty, 1998).
However, we may question to what degree that underlying congruence exists.
The loop that runs through this simple model of performance measurement and management may be either a consistent chain of accountability or a disjointed series of inconsistent frameworks.
Brignall and Modell (2000) have argued that the use of de-coupled performance measures, that may be either contradictory in themselves or reflect inconsistent goals, may be a rational response by managers to the diverse and conflicting objectives of various stakeholders. This may, for example, reflect the difficulty in expressing in the quantitative or financial terms required by national management and external stakeholders the due process and qualitative concerns of internal professional stakeholder groups.
Similarly, Dillard, Rigsby and Goodman (2004) have observed that decoupling is a result of incongruence between the goals of the broader, external environment and those of the individual organisation. They suggest, “The implementation of an institutional practice is symbolic, or decoupled, if it is not integrated into the management and organization processes” (p. 518).
Standard investment analysis, stock control, make or buy, type decisions
It is apparent, therefore, that the differences between the formally espoused and in use performance management models are not based on absolute distinctions but rather on what may be seen as a series of paradoxes by which agencies may:
focus on managing both processes and outcomes;
represent performance both objectively and subjectively; and
utilise a formal and a substantive rationality.
These paradoxes reflect the tensions that create divisions between the formal and in use models. Integrating those models requires the inclusion of the more subjectively framed information and substantive rationality that is employed by decision makers both within and outside of public service agencies. It also requires an approach to the development and application of nationally defined models that is based on culturally embedded shared understanding and an acknowledgement that:
Measurement in the public sector is less about precision and more about increasing understanding and knowledge. (Mayne, 1999)
A rational model of forests …
An accountants model of forests ?
A more complex model of forests ….
“Can’t see the wood for the trees?”
