Learning as a Key to Citizen‐centred Performance Improvement: A Comparison between the Health Service Centre and the Household Registration Office in Taipei City (“学习”作为公民为基绩效改善之关键因素：台北市健康服务中心与户政事务所之比较研究)1

Abstract

The function of ‘learning’ as a key to enhancing public responsiveness, outwards accountability and performance improvement has been well identified. But is there any variation in impact if different learning roles are played by people at different levels in organisational hierarchies? Through a comparative study of two frontline service systems and their performance management mechanism in Taipei City of Taiwan, the author identifies two kinds of learning: policy learning and instrumental learning, and argues that if policy learning is taken by a policymaking/supervisory agency, it will strengthen upwards accountability of its subordinate executive agencies at the expense of outwards accountability, and will stimulate their instrumental learning for target‐based performance measurement, on the other hand, if policy learning spurred by their own performance evaluation is taken by executive agencies, it will strengthen their outwards accountability without any negative impact on upwards accountability.“学习”作为提升公共响应性、外部问责及绩效改善的关键因素已被注意到。但学习角色在组织系统中的层级分布差异会否带来不同的效果呢？透过台北市两个前线服务系统及它们绩效管理机制之比较研究，本文作者辨识出两种学习模式：政策性学习及工具性学习，并主张如果由政策制定或上级机关进行政策性学习的话，这会强化对下属执行机关的垂直问责，但会牺牲外部问责，由此刺激工具性学习。另一方面，如果由绩效评估驱动政策性学习，且由执行机关进行这学习的话，那么就能强化外部问责，但不会对垂直问责造成任何负面影响。