This article serves as the introduction for the four articles in this symposium issue on performance measurement and management for public works and public infrastructure. The effective management of performance in public works organizations has received an inadequate amount of study in the academic literature and it is hoped that this symposium will provide the impetus for more research on the important of performance measurement and management in public works organizations. The complexity of and challenges to performance measurement and management in public works organizations, themes that cut across all the symposium articles, are outlined and discussed in this introduction article.
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