Performance Management Research for State and Local Government: Where It Should Go Next

Considerable research on performance management at all levels of government, including state and local, has been published in recent years. Much of this work has attempted to describe or explain various aspects of the performance management phenomenon, including conditions associated with adoption, the motives and reactions of various actors, and perceptions about success or failure. This is research about performance management in state and local government. A smaller set of research, because it addresses in a utilitarian way the performance management options of state and local government practitioners, comprises the subset of performance management research for state and local government. Performance management researchers could perform a great service for state and local government if a larger portion of their research tested the efficacy of performance management in the public sector and, if efficacy is confirmed, identified the factors associated with its success.