Performance Driven Culture in the Public Sector: The Case of Nordic Countries

Michaela Kotková Stříteská,Yee Yee Sein

doi:10.3390/admsci11010004

Michaela Kotková Stříteská, Yee Yee Sein

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci11010004

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Journal: Administrative Sciences	Publication Date: Jan 5, 2021
Citations: 7	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Pardubice

Abstract

Public sector organizations face a lack of efficiency and ineffectiveness in providing their mandates due to fear of change among the public service workers. Public sector managers can instill a high performance-driven culture in employees of the public sector. For this reason, the study aims to define a set of key characteristics of organizational culture that contribute to effective performance measurement and management of public sector organizations. The qualitative research method is employed in this paper using case study comparative analysis. To get the objectives of the study, selected local governments from three different Nordic countries are analyzed. As discovered from the case study analysis, these local governments have successfully constructed and implemented performance measurement and management systems. Concurrently, they practice performance-driven culture key characteristics to achieve their organizational targets without any significant difficulties. Three key characteristics (strong performance-driven leadership, report and communicate performance, review and discuss performance) are used in all selected local governments, and one (the reward system) is missing. All four key characteristics are employed only in Helsinki, which is a benchmark for other local governments. This study’s results can thus serve as an example of best practice for other public sector organizations within Europe.

Highlights

Nowadays, many public sector organizations face inefficient and ineffective provision of public services, so they are willing to change their management style (MeričkováMikušová et al 2020)
This research aims to verify whether there is an organizational culture in a selected sample of public sector organizations in the Nordic countries and what tools are used to complete it
The findings confirm that BSC is very well known and recognized as perfectly acceptable performance measurement and management system (Atkinson 2012) that has been effectively employed in many public sector organizations

Summary

Introduction

In this context, organizational culture has become one of the critical issues of performance measurement and management (PMM). Organizational culture directly impacts the design and implementation of the performance measurement system as well as the success or failure of its usage (Bititci et al 2006). The culture of every organization and its environment plays several roles, such as stimulating performance and “successfulness”. To successfully manage performance, it is imperative to build a suitable organizational culture. In an organization where organizational culture is entrenched, the performance of workers is affected positively. Other scholars posit that quality of organizational culture stimulates collaboration and creates a sense of belongingness (Ricky 2007; Gunaraja 2014, Stejskal et al.2016 or Prokop et al 2018). Shahzad et al (2013) contend that a great source of performance excellence and consistent achievement are embedded in a strong organizational culture

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Discussion

Conclusion