Organizational Assessment And Improvement In The Public Sector

Calls for performance measures and metrics sound good, but public sector organizations often lack the tools required to assess the organization as a whole and create true change.In order to implement an integrated cycle of assessment, planning, and improvement, government agencies at all levels need a usable framework for organizational assessment that speaks to their unique needs. Organizational Assessment and Improvement in the Public Sector provides that framework, an understanding of assessment itself, and a methodology for assessment focused on the public sector. The book introduces the concept of organizational assessment, its importance, and its significance in public sector organizations. It addresses the organizational theory that underlies assessment, including change management, organizational and individual learning, and organizational development. Building on this, the author focuses on the processes and demonstrates how the communication that results from an assessment process can create a widely accepted case for change. She presents a model grounded in the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Program criteria but adapted for the culture of government organizations. She also addresses the criteria that form the basis for assessment and implementation and provides examples and best practices. Facing decreasing budgets and an increasing demand for services, government agencies must increase their capabilities, maximize their available fiscal and human resources, and increase their effectiveness and efficiency. They often operate in an atmosphere that prizes effectiveness but measures it in silos assigned to individual programs and a structure that encourages people to do more with less while systematically discouraging efficiency. Stressing the significant and important differences between a business and a government, this book supplies the knowledge and tools necessary to create a culture of assessment in government organizations at all levels.

Public agencies at the federal, state, and local levels are realizing just how important it is to assess and improve their current performance and to convey information on their achievements and opportunities to staff, leaders, and decision makers as well as externally to constituents. Organizational Assessment and Improvement in the Public Sector

Organizational Assessment: A framework for improving performance

The performance of public services is a matter of concern in many countries. Issues of public service efficiency, cost, and effectiveness have moved to the forefront of political debate. This book applies the latest thinking from Management and Organization Studies to public organizations to examine how the public sector can perform better.

Confronted with rising citizen discontent, the Reinventing Government movement, and new technological challenges, public organizations everywhere are seeking means of improving their performance. Their quest is not new, rather, the concern with improving the performance of government organizations has existed since the Scientific Management Movement. Public Sector Performance brings together in a single volume the classic, enduring principles and processes that have defined the field of public sector performance, as written in the words of leading practitioners and scholars. Taken as a whole, this volume provides a performance compass for today's public managers, helping them to reconstruct the public's confidence in, and support of, government.Defined here as managing public organizations for outcomes, performance is examined in all its varied dimensions: organizing work, managing workers, measuring performance, and overcoming resistance to performance-enhancing innovations. The selected articles are interesting, thought provoking, and instructive. They are classics in that they have been widely cited in the scholarly literature and have enduring value to public managers who seek to understand the many dimensions of performance. The book is organized into three sections: Performance Foundations, Performance Strategies, and Performance Measurement. Excerpts from additional selected articles feature special topics and wisdom from performance experts.

This timely Handbook examines performance management research specific to the public sector and its contexts, and provides suggestions for future developments in the field. It demonstrates the need for performance management to be reconceptualized as a core component of business both within and across organizations, and how it must be embedded in both strategic decision-making and as a day-to-day leadership and management practice in order to be effective.

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.

"This volume spotlights recent advances in the worldwide use of quantitative performance measures in the public sector, especially approaches that incorporate program evaluation techniques. Chapters include single-country case studies, multi-country comparisons, and thoughtful essays on the challenges of making performance measurement and management work in diverse settings"--