Fostering a performance-driven culture in the public sector: culture is key in managing organizations, and specific practices make performance a cultural priority.
The Public Manager › Vol. 36 Nbr. 3, September 2007
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Fostering a performance-driven culture in the public sector: culture is key in managing organizations, and specific practices make performance a cultural priority.
Organizational culture is a concept widely understood on the surface. The focus of several books, it's a construct like weather and social status, which has been invented by people who want to study or discuss it. In the not-too-distant past, the subject was only explored in arcane social science journals; now it is frequently discussed by senior executives.
Researchers tend to break it down into dimensions (such as the level of comfort with risk and uncertainty) and use interviews, focus groups, or surveys to assess each of them. Thus far, however, they do not agree on the relevant dimensions, and each book seems to rely on a different definition. Nevertheless, the literature agrees that this culture is central to our understanding of organizations. The current public-sector focus is on "performance culture," a term largely ignored in corporate studies, but coined in government a few years ago to describe a culture where performance is a recognized pr...See the full content of this document
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