Public Sector Performance: Management, Motivation, And Measurement

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.

Table of Contents:
Introduction -- Performance Foundations -- Productivity and the Process of Organizational Improvement -- A Capacity-Building Framework -- The Deadly Sins in Public Administration -- Humanizing Public Administration -- Initiating Change that Perseveres -- Turnaround at the Alabama Rehabilitation Agency -- Common Barriers to Productivity Improvement in Local Government -- Recognizing Management Technique Dysfunctions -- Performance Strategies -- Municipal Management Tools from 1976 to 1993 -- Putting a Powerful Tool to Practical Use -- Reorganizations and Reforms -- MBO in State Government -- Motivational Programs and Productivity Improvement in Times of Limited Resources -- A Technique for Controlling Quality -- Adapting Total Quality Management (TQM) to Government -- Computer Technology and Productivity Improvement -- Organizational Decline and Cutback Management -- An Empirical Study of Competition in Municipal Service Delivery -- Performance Measurement -- Excellence in Public Service—How Do You Really Know? -- The Self-Evaluating Organization -- Program Evaluation and Program Management -- Performance Measurement Principles and Techniques -- Measuring State and Local Government Performance -- Developing Performance Indicators for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation

About the Author :
Richard Kearney