Organizational Social Capital, Performance Information Use, and the Budget Process: Lessons from Florida

The integration and use of performance information in the decision making process constitutes the backbone of performance management. Performance information use refers to the willingness of public managers or other relevant... [ view full abstract ]

The integration and use of performance information in the decision making process constitutes the backbone of performance management. Performance information use refers to the willingness of public managers or other relevant stakeholders to base their decision making process on actual data and facts. When speaking of performance information one refers to data which are produced as a part of the systematic routines associated with management-for-results reforms: defining goals, identifying indicators to measure goal achievement, and regularly tracking performance against these indicators. This articles explore the use and integration of performance information in the budget process. Following a big strain in the literature of performance management, it seeks to understand what the organizational factors of performance information use and integration in the budget process are.

Among the identified organizational factors, Organizational Social Capital (OSC) has been overlooked thus far. OSC is composed of the dimensions of social interaction, trust, and shared goal. The main argument of the paper is that OSC is relevant for performance management system to work and in particular that OSC fosters performance information use and integration in the budget process in public administrations.

To test this hypothesis I surveyed public managers in all the 67 counties of the State of Florida. Preliminary results show that there is evidence for the hypothesized effects. Organizational capital is an important predictor of performance information use and thus deserves to receive further attention by researchers and practitioners alike.