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Metrics, Targets and Performance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

Philip Andrew Stevens ,
Lucy Stokes  and
Mary O'Mahony
Philip Andrew Stevens*
Affiliation:
National Institute of Economic and Social Research and Medium Term Strategy Group, Ministry of Economic Development, New Zealand
Lucy Stokes
Affiliation:
National Institute of Economic and Social Research
Mary O'Mahony
Affiliation:
National Institute of Economic Research and Birmingham Business School
*
e-mail: p.stevens@niesr.ac.uk
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Abstract

The setting and use of targets in the public sector has generated a growing amount of interest in the UK. This has occurred at a time when more analysts and policymakers are grasping the nettle of measuring performance in and of the public sector. We outline a typology of performance indicators and a set of desiderata. We compare the outcome of a performance management system — star ratings for acute hospital trusts in England — with a productivity measure analogous to those used in the analysis of the private sector. We find that the two are almost entirely unrelated. Although this may be the case for entirely proper reasons, it does raise questions as to the appropriateness of such indicators of performance, particularly over the long term.

Keywords

Public sector performanceProductivityAcute TrustsH11H14I12I18
Type
Articles
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 197 , 01 July 2006 , pp. 80 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

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Footnotes

The research reported here was funded by the ESRC, Grant no. RES-153-25-00 44. Thanks go to Gwyn Bevan, Rowena Jacobs, Martin Weale and participants at the 4th NIESR Public Sector Performance Conference, January 2006, for helpful comments, although the usual caveats apply.

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