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Conference Paper Performance Measurement in Practice: A Methodology Gone Amuck!(1979) Ostrom, Elinor"'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."Working Paper Political Economy Approach to the Analysis of Institutional Behavior and Consequences(1979) Kiser, Larry L.; Ostrom, ElinorFrom p. 1: "Undertaking a synthesis of work in political economy for a Handbook of Political Behavior is a massive task. The potential literature for such a review is far too extensive for the limitations of a single chapter. Moreover, the term political economy is used to characterize such a wide variety of academic work that no single chapter could provide a coherent synthesis of all the different perspectives. A chapter-length discussion must be more selective. "This chapter focuses entirely on the political economy literature which starts with the individual as a basic unit of analysis and which conceptualizes collectives of individuals as artifacts crafted to increase individuals access to available outcomes. Literature examining the effects of different institutional arrangements on the conduct and behavior of individuals and literature evaluation consequences is emphasized."Conference Paper Productivity in the Urban Public Sector(1979) Ostrom, ElinorFrom page 1: "A critical issue in comparative urban policy research pertains to the productivity of agencies supplying urban public services. Many problems associated with the urban crisis relate to the failure of such urban public services as police, education, welfare, waste collection and disposal, and transportation. Productivity is defined here as the difference between: (1) the value of the output of urban delivery systems and (2) the value of the inputs used by such systems, while (3) controlling for the costs of production under different service conditions.1 Productivity is a more complex phenomenon than many subjects of comparative urban research since it is not an attribute of any specific actor. We cannot simply agree upon a definition and apply a measurement instrument to a single source of data as we can with attributes of citizens, street-level bureaucrats, and public officials-or other actors. (Even this process is difficult as witnessed by the extended debates over such measures as IQ.) Productivity is measured by computing the relationship among three quite complicated concepts: (1) the inputs for an urban delivery system, (2) the outputs produced by that system, and (3) the relevant service conditions."