Challenging the Performance Movement: Accountability, Complexity, and Democratic Values (Public Management and Change series)
"[Radin] casts her experienced and perceptive eye across the landscape of recent attempts to make government more efficient and effective." --Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory"A highly distinct study that looks at the problems with performance management that are typically glossed over, in a way that will grab students' and scholars' attention and help bring balance to any discussion of the subject." --Burt S. Barnow, Associate Director for Research, Institute for Policy Studies, Johns Hopkins University"Beryl Radin has produced an important and timely challenge to the current orthodoxy in some political and academic circles about performance measurement. The 'performance movement', especially in the US and other 'anglo' countries, has all too often relied on simplistic, overly rational, value-free and linear assumptions about what performance means in a public service context. Dr. Radin effectively challenges all these assumptions and shows the paradoxes that underpin them. Most importantly, she offers an alternative vision which does not reject performance measurement out of hand, as some have, but instead seeks to re-found it in a democratic, pluralistic and accountable context. A well grounded and enjoyable 'must read' for anyone interested in this field." --Colin Talbot, chair of Public Policy and Management, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester