Governance And Performance Management In Public Universities

This edited volume contributes to the ongoing research and practice on applying performance management to university governance. A comparative approach and international perspective of the issue is provided through extensive use of case studies and empirical findings. A specific focus is also placed on using performance governance applied to higher education institutions' Third Mission, and on enhancing decision makers’ ability to frame dynamic complexity. In this regard, specific attention is devoted to analyzing the cause-and-effect relationships in affecting public outcomes. This also includes managing trade-offs in both time and space, and detecting and counteracting unintended behavioral effects from the use of formal systems focused on quantitative measures for performance assessment.

How effective are public managers as they seek to influence how public organizations deliver policy results? How, and how much, is management related to the performance of public programs? What aspects of management can be distinguished? Can their separable contributions to performance be estimated? The fate of public policies in today's world lies in the hands of public organizations, which in turn are often intertwined with others in latticed patterns of governance. Collectively, these organizations are expected to generate performance in terms of policy outputs and outcomes. In this book, two award-winning researchers investigate the effectiveness of management in the public sector. Firstly, they develop a systematic theory on how effective public managers are in shaping policy results. The rest of the book then tests this theory against a wide range of evidence, including a data set of 1,000 public organizations.

In times of rising expectations and decreasing resources for the public sector, performance management is high on the agenda. Increasingly, the value of the performance management systems themselves is under scrutiny, with more attention being paid to the effectiveness of performance management in practice. This new edition has been revised and updated to examine: performance in the context of current public management debates, including emerging discussions on the New Public Governance and neo-Weberianism; the many definitions of performance and how it has become one of the most contested agendas of public management; the so-called perverse effects of using performance indicators; the technicalities of performance measurement in a five step process: prioritising measurement, indicator development, data collection, analysis and reporting; and the future challenges and directions of performance management Performance Management in the Public Sector 2nd edition offers an approachable insight into a complex theme for practitioners and public management students alike.

The fast-changing evolutionary process of global Higher Education systems systematically poses new challenges related to the appearance of innovative elements that lead academic governing bodies to question current managerial structures and methods. Due to this, theory and practice have gathered multiple contributions and experiences to support and further develop this evolutionary pathway during the past decades. Global competitiveness, economic and social growth are driven worldwide by knowledge and innovation. In this context, Higher Education Institutions play a crucial role as they primarily contribute to knowledge transfer and development and, as a result, foster regional development, employment, and economic wealth. The relevance of this role leads Universities to explore alternative solutions for managing their performance according to a sustainable perspective. This book draws on this flourishing debate on Higher Education policy and management and investigates an innovative systemic perspective to design and implement sustainable performance management systems for academic institutions. The conditions for the success of Universities, the critical issues underlying the creation of academic value, the dynamic complexity characterizing academic governance settings, the pluralistic audience of stakeholders and related expectations, the causal interplays between organizational performance variables, represent some of the central themes around which this work is developed. More specifically, the book suggests and discusses the adoption of a Dynamic Performance Management approach to frame the inherent organizational complexity of Higher Education Institutions, thus supporting a strategic learning perspective to design and implement relevant performance measures. This approach originates from the combination between conventional performance management and System Dynamics modeling. Many research and practice contributions prove that this methodological combination can boost the understanding and interpretation of value creation processes by identifying and exploring the causal connections amongst strategic resource allocation and consumption, corresponding performance drivers, emerging outputs, and outcomes. To test the effectiveness of this approach in University settings, a wide range of examples is offered in each book chapter. This allows readers to explore the advantages, limitations, and practical implications of adopting Dynamic Performance Management in Higher Education Institutions, as well as guide academic decision-makers towards a more robust approach to design and implement strategic management mechanisms in Universities.

Drawing on recent advances in social science, these essays demonstrate how rigorous, theory-based research in public management can improve government performance. They reflect the improved techniques in data and statistics which allow researchers to contruct more incisive models of governance.

This book highlights the use of an outcome-oriented view of performance to frame and assess the desirability of the effects produced by adopted policies, so to allow governments not only to consider effects in the short, but also the long run. Furthermore, it does not only focus on policy from the perspective of a single unit or institution, but also under an inter-institutional viewpoint. This book features theoretical and empirical research on how public organizations have evolved their performance management systems toward outcome measures that may allow one to better deal with wicked problems. Today, ‘wicked problems’ characterize most of governmental planning involving social issues. These are complex policy problems, underlying high risk and uncertainty, and a high interdependency among variables affecting them. Such problems cannot be clustered within the boundaries of a single organization, or referred to specific administrative levels or ministries. They are characterized by dynamic complexity, involving multi-level, multi-actor and multi-sectoral challenges. In the last decade, a number of countries have started to develop new approaches that may enable to improve cohesion, to effectively deal with wicked problems. The chapters in this book showcase these approaches, which encourage the adoption of more flexible and pervasive governmental systems to overcome such complex problems. Outcome-Based Performance Management in the Public Sector is divided into five parts. Part 1 aims at shedding light on problems and issues implied in the design and implementation of “outcome-based” performance management systems in the public sector. Then Part 2 illustrates the experiences, problems, and evolving trends in three different countries (Scotland, USA, and Italy) towards the adoption of outcome-based performance management systems in the public sector. Such analyses are conducted at both the national and local government levels. The third part of the book frames how outcome-based performance management can enhance public governance and inter-institutional coordination. Part 4 deals with the illustration of challenges and results from different public sector domains. Finally the book concludes in Part 5 as it examines innovative methods and tools that may support decision makers in dealing with the challenges of outcome-based performance management in the public sector. Though the book is specifically focused on a research target, it will also be useful to practitioners and master students in public administration .

​This book explains the basic concepts of the performance management, including the achievement of government goals, management capacity, administrative efficiency and policy effects. Taking Hangzhou, one of the largest cities in China, as an example, the book offers readers a new dimension through which the government can be understood and reformed—performance. Performance management has become an important component of public administration in China, and its use is beneficial in evaluating performance and social benefit. It also incentivizes civil servants to become more motivated and innovative, prevents the development of a bureaucratic atmosphere and facilitates communication between the public sector and the people. The book first introduces the concept of the performance management, providing a detailed description of its history, basic theories and its development. It then discusses the evolution of the system (from objective-based responsibility system evaluation to “vote for excellence”), its three basic areas (performance management on the national, local and municipal levels) and its key components: openness, democracy, accountability and performance. This book allows readers to gain a deeper understanding of the importance of government performance management in China and its contribution to the modernization of state governance and political legitimacy.

​This book contributes to the current discussion in society, politics and higher education on innovation capacity and the financial and non-financial incentives for researchers. The expert contributions in the book deal with implementation of incentive systems at higher education institutions in order to foster innovation. On the other hand, the book also discusses the extent to which governance structures from economy can be transferred to universities and how scientific performance can be measured and evaluated. This book is essential for decision-makers in knowledge-intensive organizations and higher-educational institutions dealing with the topic of performance management.