I am chairing this track at the Italian Annual Organization Studies Conference, with co-chair
Maddalena Sorrentino. Though local in spirit, the conference is increasingly opening its appeal to
international scholars and researchers.
The 2012 edition will be in Verona, rather close both to Milan, Bologna, and Venice
Happy New Year
Luca Solari - Univ. of Milan
*** Apologies for cross-postings ***
XIII WOA 2012: "Desperately seeking performances in Organizations"
http://www.woa2012.it/index.html
Verona, Italy, 28?29 May 2012
Opening submission process: 15/11/2011
Deadline for full papers: 15/02/2012
Notification of acceptance: 31/03/2012
Conference: 28-29/05/2012
Track 7: The elusive notion of performance in the public sector
http://www.woa2012.it/track.html#track7
The public administration (central and local, healthcare, and higher education) is an area in which it
is essential to govern complexity to operate successfully. The increase in that complexity in the past
decade has, above all, highlighted the importance of accountability, based on verified and
documented results, to justify the use of collective resources. To spur positive change in public
services, the movement known as New Public Management (NPM) considers it crucial to orient
performance. Nevertheless, the countries that have embarked on this vast political and managerial
experiment have all encountered limitations and drawbacks. For example, aside from the general
pressure to be cost-effective, accountable and transparent, the implementation of NPM across
sectors such as healthcare, justice and higher education reveals highly different dynamics in terms of
the implementation processes and the results achieved.
According to widespread opinion, one of the greatest critical factors of the reforms proposed of
late in Italy is that of having created what, in theory, is an ?open? system of public administration,
which in practice, however, retains most of the basic framework of the traditional, self-referential
model to which has been added a superstructure of principles, criteria and systems taken from the
corporate world.
?Failure? is a frequent occurrence for which two broad types of explanation are advanced. While
the first points to managerial incompetence in the use of NPM techniques, an alternative interpretive
key underscores the structural constraints that management practice faces in the public sector.
The Track aims to use multidisciplinary contributions ? based on different theoretical and
empirical approaches ? to investigate the processes adopted in both research and practice to design,
implement and assess performance evaluation systems. The Track hopes to attract papers that offer
- hopefully in a distinctive way ? stimuli for organizational reflection and action.
Suggested areas that the track would cover:
1. Multidimensionality of performance management (PM) systems in the public sector
2. Organizational strategy and PM: What do they mean for public managers?
3. Performance measurement vs. Performance evaluation
4. Pitfalls and challenges in implementing performance management systems in the higher
education sector
5. Resistance to PM systems
6. Management in high-performance public organizations
7. Managing citizen expectations of public service performance
8. Performance management in Italian public organizations after the ?Brunetta Reform?
9. Organizational performance: does management matter?
10. The rhetoric of change
11. How much do the computer-based information systems used by the public administrations
support the principles that underpin performance management?
12. Implementing New Public Management within and across contexts