The impact on organizational behavior of setting targets and monitoring progress has been well established (Latham, Borgogni, and Petitta 2008; Locke and Latham 1990; Latham and Pinder 2005; Duncan 1989, chap 7). Latham and Locke, perhaps the two most prominent scholars in this field, conclude that “the simplest and most direct motivational explanation of why some people perform better than others is because they have different performance goals” (1991, 213). Yet, the use of this not very complicated management strategy is underutilized. Rousseau observes that “sadly, there is poor uptake on management practices of known effectiveness”; for her example, Rousseau uses “goal setting and performance feedback” (2006, 258). And Rousseau is writing, primarily, about management in the private, not the public, sector.
Why is this uptake so poor? I’m not sure.1 In the public sector, however, perhaps three aspects of political and organizational judgments are important deterrents:...

Active enforcement of city renewal policies in local China today has constituted a source of social unrests, due to their adverse potentials on present and future lives of the uprooted households. While emerging theories on policy feedback propose that individuals formulate their policy preferences and participation choices based on personal stakes from public service outputs, the perspective of social integration implies that neighborhood connectedness and individual involvement in community are crucial for shaping their interpretation on and actions in policy enforcement. The article combines the two theoretical approaches in assessing what caused households to resist the compensation proposals in an urban renovation program in a Hui ethnicity community in Xi’an, a Chinese west city. It is found that first, higher level of public service outputs aimed on increasing households’ economic incomes caused inhabitants to be cautious of accepting the compensation proposals, in a fear that the economic gains would diminish due to decreased level of outputs after resettlement. Second, social integration moderates the associations between different types of public service outputs and agreement with the compensation offers. Third, the moderating effects by different types of social integrations vary by both pushing and impeding the perceived public service outputs to leading to support to the compensation solutions. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Governance networks are presented as one of the answers to fragmentation and specialization in modern public life. By improving horizontal cooperation and active management better (social) outcomes should be achieved in situations where integrated solutions are required and resource dependencies exist. Governance networks are especially said to be suitable for so called wicked problems. Wicked problems are also characterized by value conflicts. Environmental projects for instance often involve value struggles between ecological values, economic values transport values or ‘liveability’ values. In those situations governance networks should provide broad societal outcomes that are outcomes that can satisfy various values at stake.

State Reform has become the main topic on the world's political agenda. This process dates from the late seventies, with the onset of the crisis in the State model, which had been created by developed countries during the postwar and set off an unprecedented era of capitalist prosperity. The first response to the crisis was a neo-liberal-conservative reaction. Given the pressing need to reform the State, reestablish fiscal balance and the balance of payment of countries in crisis, it was felt advisable to simply propose State downsizing and total market predominance. The proposal, however, made little sense from the economic and political point of view. In fact, after some time, it was determined that rather than dismantling the State structure, the solution would lie in its reconstruction.
The object is to build a State that will be able to face the challenges of the post-industrial age. A State for the XXIst century, which will guarantee the performance of economic contracts, while also having the strength to guarantee social rights and competitiveness of each country on the international scene. Thus, a third way is being sought between neo-liberal laissez-faire and the former social-bureaucratic model of state intervention.

Can we permit empowered, responsive civil servants to make decisions and be innovative and still have democratic accountability? This important question1 haunts those who would advocate a "new public management." The proponents of a new public-management paradigm emphasize performance the ability of their strategy to produce results. But they cannot ignore the troubling question of political accountability. They must develop a process that not only permits public managers to produce better results but also provides accountability to a democratic electorate.

New Public Management is a field of discussion largely about policy interventions within executive government. The characteristic instruments of such policy interventions are institutional rules and organizational routines affecting expenditure planning and financial management, civil service and labor relations, procurement, organization and methods, and audit and evaluation. These instruments exercise pervasive influence over many kinds of decisions made within government. While they do not determine the scope or programmatic content of governmental activity, these government-wide institutional rules and organizational routines affect how government agencies are managed, operated, and overseen: they structure that part of the governmental process usefully described as public management.1 In recent years, political executives, central agency leaders, and legislators in numerous settings have demonstrated a sustained interest in policies affecting public management, the best-known cases of which are the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia.

Governments of developing countries, often under pressure from donors as well as from internal forces for change, are re-thinking their service provision roles. The new conventional view is that, where possible, government should enable and regulate the private and community sectors or arms-length public agencies rather than directly provide services.
This sort of shift is supposed to have advantages in terms of promoting efficiency, reducing the burden on government and giving more choice to citizens. Our four year research programme on the 'changing roles of government in adjusting economies'...explored these issues in selected countries of Africa, Asia and South America... we focused on four sectors selected because they represent different theoretical (market failure) cases for government involvement in their provision - health care, urban water supply, agricultural marketing and business development services.

At what stage of reform in the public sector does it become possible to conduct a thorough appraisal of results and how does one know when this stage has been reached? How should such an assessment be undertaken? By what methods can comprehensive and far-reaching systemic reforms be evaluated in the arena of public management during recent decades, particularly in countries like Australia, Britain and New Zealand? Most assessments have focused upon specific changes in management practice including the introduction of performance pay, the move to accrual accounting, the growth of contracting-out, the separation of policy and operations or the devolution of human resource management responsibilities. Alternatively, they have dealt with management changes in particular policy domains –such as health care, education, community services or criminal justice –or within a particular organization (department, agency or private provider). By contrast, there have been relatively few macro evaluations –comprehensive assessments of the impact of root-and-branch changes to the system. The problems of evaluation in the arena of public management are inherently complex and the way ahead is by no means clear. This article offers some broad reflections on the limitations to policy evaluation in the field of public management, and more particularly explores the obstacles confronted when assessing the consequences of systemic management reforms. It focuses on recent changes in the New Zealand public sector to illustrate the general themes because these reforms constitute one of best examples of systemic change anywhere in the world. © 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.

Paper prepared for the 1999 International Public Management Network Workshop, Siena, Italy

The last two decades have seen a remarkable and unexpected development of public management reforms. Public management has moved from being regarded as an alien idea of peripheral significance to be widely accepted as a key factor in improving governmental performance. Politicians and senior officials who used to disdain “management” as a subordinate function unworthy of their attention, now accord it high priority. Almost any new policy initiative is accompanied by an assurance that the management systems needed to guarantee success will be put in place. Public management reform has become a global growth industry based, paradoxically, on reducing the scope and scale of government. Many reforms have been sold as slimming cures. Whether leaner government is also fitter government is open to debate, but there is little doubt that there has been a cultural shift towards accepting management models and methods in government on an unprecedented scale.

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