Managing through Measurement or Meaning? Lessons from Experience with New Zealand’s Public Sector Performance Management Systems

Abstract

Comprehensive adoption of systems for managing for results as an alternative to procedure-based bureaucracy has earned the New Zealand public sector a reputation as the ‘world’s most advanced performance system’ (Kettl, 2000: 7). Research with a cross-section of users of this system, now nearly 15 years old, reveals a variety of responses. True Believers support a current focus on measurement and think that more effort should be put into creating clearer, more observable measures that emphasise outcomes. Pragmatic Sceptics see reported measures as part of a new game of public management and at best a starting point for asking about the substance behind the form. Active Doubters believe that too much emphasis on measurement gets in the way of the ‘real work’ of developing relationship-based work in a political environment. Issues of meaning are seen to be more important than measurement for the further development of the system.