Starting from the 1980s, the New Public Management (Lapsley) principles increased the interest about a more efficient, effective and accountable public sector (Lapsley, 1999). In the Italian health sector, this influence could... [ view full abstract ]
Starting from the 1980s, the New Public Management (Lapsley) principles increased the interest about a more efficient, effective and accountable public sector (Lapsley, 1999). In the Italian health sector, this influence could be seen from the 90s when reforms, that introduced managerial tools, took place.
In the literature, there is a gap with reference to the way in which effectively Italian healthcare organizations measure their organizational performance.
To fill this literature gap, this article aims at answering two research questions:
- How do Italian public healthcare organizations effectively measure their organizational performance?” and
- Which are the factors that influenced performance measurement system?
To answer these research questions thirty semi-structured interviews were done. Each interview has been audiotaped and transcribed, and the interview’s contents have been analysed using Atlas.T software.
The first results show that each organization has a particular performance measurement system with specific indicators, but, nevertheless, what we found with the inductive analysis, is that there are some features in common.
In general, in Italy there are some realities in which there are structured performance measurement systems, and other cases in which there is the necessity of improving them. Each single interviewee is aware of the importance of the performance measurement like a way to manage the organizations and improve their performance.
