Leadership and Evidence‐Based Performance

• Author: Adam Eckerd
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12701
• Published date: 01 January 2017
• Date: 01 January 2017

Book Reviews 139

Leadership and Evidence-Based Performance

Adam Eckerd is assistant professor

with the Center for Public Administration

and Policy at Virginia Polytechnic Institute

and State University. He conducts research

on organizational and individual decision

making, particularly as it relates to how risk

is assessed and how information is used to

manage public and nonprofit programs and

policies. Adam holds a PhD from the John

Glenn College of Public Affairs at The Ohio

State University, and an MA in government

from Johns Hopkins University.

E-mail: aeckerd@vt.edu

Robert D. Behn ,  e PerformanceStat Potential:

A Leadership Strategy for Producing Results

( Washington, DC : Brookings Institution Press , 2014 ) .

413 pp. $32.95 (paper), ISBN: 9780815725275 .

I t was never really right to call CompStat,

the New York Police Department ’ s (NYPD)

performance management approach, revolutionary.

In his new book detailing the use of statistics-

based performance management (which, following

convention, I will refer to as PerformanceStat) across

a wide range of different urban governance issues,

Robert D. Behn mostly avoids talk of revolution.

While he notes that CompStat proved innovative

and has been copied successfully and unsuccessfully

across a wide variety of governmental services, up

Danny L. Balfour and Stephanie P. Newbold , Editors

Adam Eckerd

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University