New Public Management (NPM), a doctrine offering private sector practices as a cure for public sector inefficiencies, has been adopted by several Western governments in their search for efficiency and modernization (Hood, 1995). NPM reforms have led to numerous transformations in the public sector, including in higher education organizations. Currently, in the post-NPM era, universities are increasingly competing with each other nationally and internationally with different performance criteria, e.g., different university rankings (see e.g., Brown, 2013; Kallio, 2014).
In this study, we examine the contradictory goals resulting from the universities’ performance measurement (PM) systems. The study is based on thematic interviews with the administrative managers of 12 university departments in Finland, which revealed different and conflicting managerial and/or organizational goals experienced by the departments. We call these conflicting goals dilemmas (see Hampden-Turner, 1990). In the data analysis, three core dilemma pairs, consisting of conflicting organizational goals and values in the higher education PM context were identified: performance measurement versus the nature of the work carried out in universities, the idea of rewarding good performance versus the efficient use of scarce economic resources, and performance in teaching versus performance in research.
In our analysis, we suggest solutions to the dilemmas in the universities’ PM, all of which arose from the ways in which the different case departments dealt with the conflicting interests. Consequently, some of the university departments in our study solved the tensions of contradictory goals more successfully than others, and thus the departments could possibly learn from one another. This study contributes to the existing research on the governance of the higher education PM system, bringing in dilemma theory to illuminate its contradictions (Hampden-Turner, 1990; Kuoppakangas, 2015; Suomi et al., 2014).
KEY WORDS: performance measurement systems, post-NPM, universities, dilemma approach
REFERENCES:
Brown, Roger (2013) Debate: Do we really need world class universities? Public Money and Management, Vol. 33 (2), 91–92.
Hampden-Turner, Charles (1990) Charting the Corporate Mind. From Dilemma to Strategy. Blackwell Publisher: Oxford.
Hood, Christopher (1995) The ‘New Public Management’ in the 1980s: variations on a theme. Accounting, Organizations and Society, Vol. 20 (2/3), 93–109.
Kallio, Kirsi-Mari (2014) Ketä kiinnostaa tuottaa tutkintoja ja julkaisuja liukuhihnaperiaatteella…? – Suoritusmittauksen vaikutukset tulosohjattujen yliopistojen tutkimus- ja opetushenkilökunnan työhön. Turun kauppakorkeakoulun julkaisuja, Sarja/Series A-1:2014. Dissertation. University of Turku.
Kuoppakangas, Päivikki (2015) Decision-making and choice in the adoption of a municipal enterprise form in public healthcare organisations - Reasoning, goals, legitimacy and core dilemmas. Sarja/Series A-9:2015. Dissertation. University of Turku.
Suomi, Kati - Kuoppakangas, Päivikki - Hytti, Ulla - Hampden-Turner, Charles - Kangaslahti, Jukka (2014) Focusing on dilemmas challenging reputation management in higher education, International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. 28, (4), 461–478.
