Editorial

Citation

Radnor, Z. and Heap, J. (2008), "Editorial", International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Vol. 57 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijppm.2008.07957aaa.001

Editorial

This particular issue usfully demonstrates part of the range of factors and issues of interest, and sometimes of concern, to those in the productivity and performance field. This issue focuses on what might broadly be termed public sector organisations, with a degree of further specialism into healthcare organisations, and applications. The past 15 years has seen a shift change in the practices and processes implemented and used within public services as the public sector adopts – or attempts to adopt – (so adapts?) the principles and practices of the private sector.

In fact, this is one of the motivating forces behind this issue. All nations and regions want an efficient and effective public sector. The common belief is that public sector organisations must adopt the principles and practices of the private sector to enter a quasi-competitive world where competition drives up quality and efficiency. Within this there is a principle that the use of performance measures, metrics, rankings and targets are a means by which the “competition” can be created. Therefore, the area of performance measurement and management within public services has received much attention by academics, practitioners and civil servants. There is still a number of questions whether the approach is the right one or, in fact, it serves to distract from delivering the service as public servants become more focus on meeting the target (and missing the point) than developing and improving the service.

Of course to prove whether such an approach works in practice requires us to compare performance and productivity before and after the changes, and perhaps to compare performance with private sector organisations – if we can find any that are truly comparable. Some obvious comparators do exist – private and public sector healthcare organisations, for example … but the “obviousness” of the comparability does not always stand up to detailed scrutiny. Nor is it always accepted by public servants who feel that the context and structure is not comparable. This issue brings you five academic papers which investigate the use and “usefulness” of productivity, performance measurement and management approaches in health, local government and central government departments. These papers may well raise more questions than they answer.

IJPPM also tries to bring you a cross-section of news and views relating to productivity and performance measurement and management in the “Reflective practice” section. In this issue there are two papers, one relating to the still-developing concept of “green productivity” (how does an organisation fulfil its obligations to society while maximising its ability to fulfil its obligations to its shareholders?) and another relating to the development of the Six Sigma concept and, in particular, the role of academic institutions in that development.

As the paper explains, there seems to be a gap where academic institutions engage in primary research relating to business improvement but often do not engage in the “development” aspects of R&D, getting closer to the factory floor and that mythical “real world”. Of course there are honourable exceptions but Antony is right to express his concerns.

Zoe Radnor, John Heap