Public Management and Administration - Owen E.hughes

162 Public Management and Administration
measures, as there are for any changes which affect so many staff, but rather
than abandon the use of performance indicators, it is suggested that more work
should provide better measures.
A pattern seems to occur in which performance measures are initially both
opposed and poorly conceived. Osborne and Gaebler argue ‘this pattern –
adoption of crude performance measures, followed by protest and pressure to
improve the measures, followed by the development of more sophisticated
measures – is common wherever performance is measured’ (1992, p. 156).
Perhaps too much can be claimed for the use of performance indicators.
Rather than being performance measures – perfect surrogates for profit in the
private sector – they are really indicators of performance which are simply
pointers to good or bad performance, and do not try to measure it precisely. Not
measuring performance is now inconceivable, but there are many better ways
in which performance indicators can and should be used. As Carter, Klein and
Day argue, ‘the real challenge is to move from an exclusively managerial view
of accountability and the role of performance indicators, to a wider, political
definition’ (1992, p. 183). As well as indicators of overall progress towards
objectives or the achievement of financial targets, there should be indicators of
customer or client satisfaction or the speed and level of service delivery.
Indicators should aim at measuring effectiveness and quality, rather than efficiency
(Flynn, 1997, pp. 170–85) and outcomes instead of outputs.
Problems of morale
The series of unrelenting attacks on government and bureaucracy, followed by
a series of bewildering changes including those of performance measurement
and personnel changes, have caused problems of morale. Public administration
in its Golden Age was a valuable and valued profession. This was no longer the
case by the 1980s and individual bureaucrats had to cope with antipathy from the
citizenry. Weber wanted bureaucrats to be respected as an elite group, but increasingly,
they have been vilified as wasting scarce taxpayer money. The lack of regard
from the public for the bureaucracy has undoubtedly made the managerial reform
process easier to accept, but has probably exacerbated the problem of public
service morale. Managerial changes and reforms have imputed the motives of
public servants and taken away many of their hard-fought benefits, such as the
expectation of a job for life.
Not only is there a serious morale problem, there seems to be no quick or
easy solution to it. Demoralized workers are obviously less effective, so that
improving overall performance requires attention being paid to problems of
morale. The morale problem may be part of a larger problem. Attacks on the
bureaucracy, even on government as a whole, might be part of some general
disaffection with the idea of politics and government. Perhaps the attacks on
government have affected, not only public administration theory and practice,