Performance in Public Organizations: Clarifying the Conceptual Space

• Author: Lotte Bøgh Andersen,Lene Holm Pedersen,Andreas Boesen
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12578
• Published date: 01 November 2016
• Date: 01 November 2016

852 Public Administration Review • November | December 2016

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 76, Iss. 6, pp. 852–862. © 2016 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12578.

Lene Holm Pedersen is professor

in public management at Copenhagen

Business School and the Danish Institute for

Local and Regional Government Research

in Denmark. She conducts research on

steering, motivation, and performance in

the public sector. She has also published a

number of articles on the political power of

regulatory ideas, organizational change and

reform, local government and democracy,

and how local governments are influenced

by fiscal austerity.

E-mail : lhp.dbp@cbs.dk

Andreas Boesen is a master ’ s student

in the Department of Political Science,

Aarhus University, Denmark.

E-mail : aboesen@ps.au.dk

Lotte Bøgh Andersen is professor at

Aarhus University and the Danish Institute

for Local and Regional Government

Research in Denmark and visiting

scholar at The University of Georgia. Her

research interests focus on leadership,

administration, and management in

public organizations, especially motivation

and performance of public employees,

leadership strategies, professional norms,

and economic incentives. She is currently

leading a field experiment ( http://

www.leap-project.dk ) that investigates

500 public and private leaders to find out

how transformational and transactional

leadership affects employee motivation and

organizational performance.

E-mail : lotte@ps.au.dk

Abstract : Performance in public organizations is a key concept that requires clarification. Based on a conceptual

review of research published in 10 public administration journals, this article proposes six distinctions to describe the

systematic differences in performance criteria : From which stakeholder ’ s perspective is performance being assessed? Are

the criteria formal or informal? Are the criteria subjective? Which process focus and product focus do they have, if

any? What is the unit of analysis? Based on these distinctions, the performance criteria of existing studies used in an

empirical review of management and performance are classified. The results illustrate how a systematization of the

conceptual space of performance in public organizations can help researchers select what to study and what to leave out

with greater accuracy while also bringing greater clarity to public debates about performance.

Practitioner Points

• It is important to systematize what is included in and what is left out of performance assessments. It is

normally not possible or even desirable to include all possible aspects of performance in an assessment, but it

is very useful to know explicitly which types of performance you measure—and which you do not.

• Many performance criteria focus only on what is achieved in public organizations, but it can also be relevant

to include process aspects of performance, such as equal access to services.

• It is important to be aware of whose performance you are analyzing: individuals, teams, organizations, or

other units of analysis. Performance can be conceptualized at many different levels in public organizations,

and if teamwork is necessary for success, it might not be meaningful to look at individual performance.

I n recent decades, both the quantity and quality

of empirical contributions to the performance

literature have increased (Andrews, Boyne, and

Walker 2006a , 2006b; Bommer 1995 ; Brewer 2006 ;

Meier and O ’ Toole 2013 ; Meier et al. 2015 ; O ’ Toole

and Meier 2013 ; Walker and Andrews 2015 ). This

is important to the field, as performance is an

important—possibly the most important—concept in

public administration. According to Rainey, “virtually

all of management and organization theory concerns

performance and effectiveness, at least implicitly”

(1997, 125). Very broadly defined, performance is the

actual achievement of a unit relative to its intended

achievements, such as the attainment of goals and

objectives (Jung 2011 , 195).

However, the performance concept itself is not clear

enough. In order to take the study of performance

one step further and bring greater clarity to public

debates about what performance is, the conceptual

space of performance in public organizations must be

clarified. Hirsh and Levin ( 1999 , 208) prophesized

25 years ago that the performance concept would

go through a life cycle whereby it would fall by the

wayside or narrow in scope once better applications

were required. They anticipated that critical reviewers

would question the validity of the concept at a later

point in its life cycle; the strong demands for better

research designs and applications indicate that they

were right (e.g., Andrews, Boyne, and Walker 2006a ;

Meier and O ’ Toole, 2013 ). However, there is tension

between rigor and relevance (Hirsch and Levin

1999 ). Especially in studies of public organization

performance, focusing on one performance criterion

without discussing what is excluded is problematic, as

most public organizations have multiple, potentially

conflicting goals. Public administration studies

of performance that do not explicate their partial

perspective will paint a biased picture of performance

as a whole.

We argue that a valid conceptual space of performance

can improve our ability to create research designs

that fill important gaps in the literature and provide

practitioners with a tool to systematize what is

included in and what is left out of performance

assessments. Thus, our research questions are as

follows: What are the central distinctions in the

Lotte Bøgh Andersen

Aarhus University, Denmark

Danish Institute for Local

and Regional Government

Research, Denmark

Andreas Boesen

Aarhus University, Denmark

Lene Holm Pedersen

Copenhagen Business School,

Denmark

Danish Institute for Local

and Regional Government

Research, Denmark

Performance in Public Organizations:

Clarifying the Conceptual Space