Trust in performance management

Evidence from research

• Performance management was originally founded on the opposite of trust ...
• ... and a turnaround based on rethinking the paradigm seems necessary
• A shift towards trust-based management and steering concepts is possible – and happening

Performance management was originally founded on the opposite of trust . . .

While trust as a guiding principle may be intuitively appealing, it is not the norm within the public sector. Van de Walle & Six (2011) argues that distrust is often the guiding principle in institutional design and in the operation of public services, pointing to the fact that public officials often have to give account of their work through elaborate accountability processes. On the citizen's side, they have to prove they are not cheating on benefits or taxes. A little over 20 years ago, Power (1999) even argued that the rise of an 'audit society' demonstrated the pervasiveness of attitudes of distrust within modern public administration. All of this has been linked to the development of performance management within the public sector in developed economies based on the principles of new public management (Van de Walle 2010, 2013).

. . . and a turnaround based on rethinking the paradigm seems necessary

Thus, the question remains as to how performance management can be shifted towards a more trust-based approach – in a way that affect outcomes in a desirable way. According to Yang & Holzer (2006), researchers has found it difficult to empirically demonstrate the link between government performance and citizen trust in government and argue that this is rooted in the difficulty of defining and measuring government performance meaningfully. To be improved, current performance-measurement practice must be shifted towards measuring what citizens really care about – incorporating both political responsiveness, institutional design, and citizen input – and be more systematic and integrated across public agencies.

A shift towards trust-based management and steering concepts is possible – and happening

Halligan & Bouckaert (2009) argues that a development within performance management is going on, in which there is a move away from the use of indicators based on a command and control approach to a different approach of using performance management as an instrument partly based on mutual trust. Bouckaert (2011) argues that this is visible throughout the public sector in developed economies.

Choudhury (2008) argues that in public administration, compared with other leading concepts such as legitimacy, accountability, efficiency, discretion, responsiveness, and public participation, a focus on trust is quite recent but increasing. In working with increasing the focus on trust, Choudhury argues for the importance in seeing trust not only as an important value in itself but also as a means for resolving conflicts of priority between organisational values – for example, balancing discretion with accountability.

Thus, the idea that trust between actors in collaborative arrangements is associated with a long list of virtues, such as better performance, is no longer new. Klijn, Edelenbos, & Steijn (2010) study governance networks characterized by complex interaction and decision making, examining if trust influence the outcomes of environmental projects and if active network management improve the level of trust in networks. Based on a survey of 337 participants involved in environmental projects, their results indicate that trust does matter for perceived outcomes and that network management strategies enhance the level of trust.