¶ … Performance Management Strategies Used by Organizations in the Private and Public Sectors Having already established the importance of performance management to an organization's overall strategy, it makes sense to use the final project to gain insight into the specific strategies used by organizations in executing their performance management plans. Rather than take a general approach, however, the researcher will focus on comparing the PM strategies used by profit-motivated organizations with those used by their counterparts in public agencies. There has been concern that organizations in the public sector do not pay a lot of emphasis to the aspect of performance management and that, hence, most public sector employees exhibit low levels of motivation and take their jobs as nothing more than just a job. This low motivation translates to time-wasting, repetitive work, unmet targets, and poor service delivery - all of which come back to haunt the taxpayer in the form of unnecessary costs. The overriding objective of the final project, therefore, will be to determine whether there are any differences between the PM strategies used in the private sector and those used in the public sector. Case studies will be used to show how some selected agencies in the public sector implement their PM programs, and how other organizations could improve themselves by emulating these practices. This paper presents the annotated bibliography for the resources that will be used to meet these objectives.

Annotated Bibliography

Boland, T. & Fowler, A. (2000). A Systems Perspective on Performance Management in Public Sector Organizations. The International Journal of Public Sector Management, 13(5), 417-446

This article begins with a statement of how public organizations differ from their private counterparts -- i) they have little incentive for income-generation and ii) they are not driven by the profit-maximizing incentive. Owing to this, performance management is a more complex process in the public sector than it is in the private sector. The best practices of performance management for organizations in the public sector are, therefore, not the same as those for their counterparts in the commercial sector. The authors use examples from within the health service, the education service, and the police service to illustrate the best practices of PM for public sector organizations. For instance, they are able to show how such strategies as positive feedback and decentralization of power to lower-level managers could help in managing performance in public sector organizations.

Towards this end, the researcher reckons that the article will be a crucial source of insight, particularly in regard to the performance management strategies that would work best in public organizations. This information will help the researcher accurately compare the performance management strategies of selected public organizations to determine which ones are worth emulating.

Bush, P. (2005). Strategic Performance Management in Government: Using the Balanced Scorecard. Cost Management, 19(3), 24-31

This article demonstrates the use of the balanced score card as a tool for managing organizational performance in both the public and private sectors. The balance score card process of PM is made up of two fundamental steps -- creation of strategy maps and development of measures for assessing the organization's progress in executing its strategy. Strategy maps provide a distinct articulation of an organization's strategy by showing how specific objectives graphically link up to the overall strategy. The author demonstrates that if properly-implemented, the balanced scorecard can be an effective strategy for PM in both commercial and public organizations.

For the final project, therefore, the balanced scorecard will be discussed as a PM strategy that organizations in both sectors could adopt to increase the effectiveness of their PM strategies. The U.S. Army, as discussed in the article, will be used as the case study. Its balanced scorecard, formally referred to as the Strategic Readiness System, which presents 66 measures for assessing progress, will be analyzed and its applicability to other organizations assessed.

Dawe, T. (2007). Performance Management and Measurement in Small Communities. Government Finance Review, 23(1), 54-59

So far, research has managed to show that the balance scorecard technique works effectively as a PM strategy in large organizations with huge chunks of financial resources and significant 'horsepower'. Concern has, towards this end, been raised over the applicability of the same in smaller organizations that perhaps do not enjoy as much power.

This article develops a unique model that allows organizations to make use of the balanced scorecard in performance management without incurring unnecessarily high costs. The proposed project rides on this model to demonstrate how small organizations at the local level could also benefit from the balanced scorecard technique.

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(2014). Staff Performance Evaluation in Public Organizations. Bulletin of the Transylvania University of Brasov. Economic Sciences, 7(2), 133-138
This article provides mechanisms for measuring and evaluating the performance of employees in public organizations. Unlike their counterparts in the private sector, employees in the private sector are not driven by the profit motive, neither do they have an incentive to generate income. Owing to this, it is rather difficult to measure their performance from a quantitative perspective. Most researchers, therefore, tend to rely on the qualitative aspects of motivation -- teamwork, commitment to values, ability, strive etc. -- in measuring employee performance in the public sector, but even these are not easy to illustrate.

This article develops a performance-evaluation mechanism that combines both of these approaches; and although the developed framework does not quantify the input of employees at such, it allows for a fair and transparent rewarding process. The researcher will use the evaluation model presented herein to assess the performance of employees in the public sector with the aim of building a case for the final project by showing why there is need to improve the performance management strategies of public organizations. The model presented herein will, therefore, provide credence to the project's purpose.

Grant, M.M. (2006). Six Sigma for People: The Heart of Performance Management? Human Resource Planning, 29(1), 10-11

This article demonstrates how organizations can use Six Sigma skills as a strategy for measuring and managing the performance of their employees. Six Sigma comprises of five major steps -- i) definition of project to be improved, ii) measurement of the performance of the process, iii) analysis of data collected from the measurement step; iv) process improvement based on the results of analysis; and v) controlling of the process at near-zero defect/error rates.

The author demonstrates how this process could be applied to performance management to ensure that employees' goals are aligned to the overall strategy. The text, therefore, provides crucial insight on how organizations in both sectors could use Six Sigma in developing their PM plans so as to make them not only more effective, but also less erroneous and more responsive to the specific performance needs of the organization.

Lin, J. & Lee, P. (2011). Performance Management in Public Organizations: A Complexity Perspective. The International Pubic Management Review, 25(2), 81-96

This article begins with an appreciation for the impact of globalization on organizations in the public sphere and how these have been forced to adjust their internal and external processes to be able to survive amidst all the turbulence. Through the complexity theory, the authors explain how technological changes spurred by globalization have impacted the internal and external environments within which organizations operate, rendering the traditional, linear models of performance management ineffective and forcing public organizations to come up with new, innovative strategies of performance management. They show that those organizations that have managed to develop innovative PM strategies in line with the changes being experienced have been able to remain effective at the expense of those that chose to stick to the old/traditional ways of doing things.

This article contributes to the final project in two fundamental ways. First, it provides knowledge on the possible reason why most public organizations do not score as highly as their profit-making counterparts in the aspect of performance management. Secondly, it gives crucial insight into what the best practices of performance management for public organizations in the modern era of globalization are. This information will help the researcher accurately compare the performance management strategies of selected public organizations to determine which ones are worth emulating.

Radnor, Z. & McGuire, M. (2004). Performance Management in the Public Sector: Fact or Fiction? International Journal of Productivity and Performance, 53(3), 245-260

This article traces the history of the UK drive to make its public sector as effective as the private sector by introducing the principles used to drive business in the latter into the former right from the Modernizing Government White Paper to the findings of the Public Services Productivity Panel with the aim of showing how successful this attempt has been. More specifically, the article shows how the integration of private sector PM principles into public organizations has influenced their performance.

The article was selected because the researcher found no studies synonymous to the U.S. context, and owing to the depth of similarities between the U.S. And the UK, it was imagined that the findings of this article could well be replicated io the U.S. context. The researcher intends to use it to show that despite the differences between the public and private…