Performance Measurement in Practice: A Methodology Gone Amuck!

Abstract

"'Evaluation research,' 'productivity measurement,' 'Management science,' and "program budgeting are different names given to closely related techniques all of which involve measuring organizational or program performance in one way or another. Much is to be learned from these approaches in any effort to to address the conceptual issues involved in measuring the performance of public agencies such as the police. However, while the early work in these traditions stressed the iterative and learning nature of the enterprise, more recent applications have routinized the process into defined steps. Blind acceptance by evaluation researchers of these reconstituted approach hes to performance measurement can have serious consequences for the quality and usefulness of the work produced."