Dysfunctional consequences of performance management - a systematic review

In times of decreasing resources and surging legitimacy problems, performance measurement and management has become a central issue in the public management field. Performance management is expected to substitute a possible... [ view full abstract ]

In times of decreasing resources and surging legitimacy problems, performance measurement and management has become a central issue in the public management field. Performance management is expected to substitute a possible lack of control that goes along with granting more flexibility, autonomy and discretion to administrative entities. Thus, the expectation inherent to the introduction of performance measurement and management is a functional one. However, performance measurement and management has received substantial critique after dysfunctional consequences have been uncovered in practice. Despite this growing attention in public management practice and also in academic literature, a comprehensive overview of dysfunctional consequences is missing to date. The present paper provides a systematic review of dysfunctional consequences of performance measurement and management. Several disciplines investigate, discuss, and provide solutions to the latter, but the contributions mainly focus on public organizations, with a strong focus on the health sector or the UK or both and a limited application of theories. More research in different areas, country contexts, using different theoretical frameworks, especially from other disciplines than economics is needed to provide a clearer picture of the dysfunctional consequences of performance measurement and management.