Performance Management and Accountability: The Welfare Administration Reform in Norway and Germany

Abstract

A key premise of recent administrative reforms was that performance management would make public organizations more accountable for results. The article discusses the relations and tensions between performance management and different forms of accountability by focusing on the reform of the welfare administration in Norway and Germany. We find that the introduction of performance management has created new accountability structures which influence service delivery, but not necessarily in the direction expected by the reform agents. Unintended consequences observed include target fixation, the displacement of political accountability, and the predominance of control aspects of accountability.