Performance Measurement, NPM reforms and implementation gap in Italy: four years later

Starting from its first appearing in the public management debates in the early ‘90s (Hood, 1995, 1991), the New Public Management (NPM) has been the most inspiring principle of public sector reforms in Europe (Pollit and... [ view full abstract ]

Starting from its first appearing in the public management debates in the early ‘90s (Hood, 1995, 1991), the New Public Management (NPM) has been the most inspiring principle of public sector reforms in Europe (Pollit and Bouckaert, 2004). Among the different core principles of the NPM, performance measurement and performance management have been discussed since their controversial results. Particularly, the implementation of performance management and measurement practices have been more challenging in the administrative and bureaucratic countries (i.e. Italy, France, Spain, Germany), characterized by a Napoleonic culture (Ongaro, 2006). In these contexts, the main obstacle to the effective implementation of NPM reforms has been demonstrated to be tje “implementation gap”, i.e. the distance between law’s prescription and actual existence of managerial tools and the distance between the formal presence of such tools and their utilization (Ongaro and Valotti, 2008).
In Italy, although the failures of previous NPM reforms were studied from different perspectives and in different domains, cross-sectoral NPM oriented reforms have kept being defined and mandated for public administrations. This process seems to have been strongly accelerated due to the recent sovereign debt crisis, the need for harmonization and the need to build a solid European financial policy. Consequently, national governments have made it a priority to improve public administration performance, to increase accountability and encourage a performance culture. In the public sector, Higher Education (HE) represents a fruitful field of study for at least two reasons. First, in a recent research based on data collected in 2012, Agasisti et al. (2015) clearly pointed out the main failures, and reasons thereof, of NPM-oriented reforms, picturing that most of the Italian public universities have adopted performance management only for external compliance. Indeed, the reform in Italy is a national imposition, a top down process by the Government. Second, the Italian HE sector has some peculiarities (i.e. its own independency, the pre-existence of an independent management control system, the autonomy of academic staff), that make the implementation of performance measurement more challenging than other sectors.
Hence, this research focuses on the implementation and use of performance management and measurement in Italian public universities. Specifically, starting from previous results, this paper aims at evaluating if and how Italian HE Institutions have implemented PMSs since the legislator has been imposing its introduction. Secondly
In order to achieve this objective and to guarantee the comparability of results, the research methodology of Agasisti et al. (2015) was adopted. Specifically, the analysis is based on the Performance Plans and the Performance Relations drew up by all Italian public universities in 2016 compared to the requirements of the “Brunetta Reform” (law 150/2009). Through the analysis of both documents, it is possible to detect the key variables behind the success or the failure of the implementation process. From a practical perspective, this paper will provide suggestions for universities’ managers to effectively implement a performance management cycle.