Performance Management, Rationality and Participation in Public Sector Organisation

This doctoral thesis critically examines the role of performance management in public sector organisations. In particular, it explores how performance management relates to different concepts of rationality (instrumental, value and communicative), including issues around rationality and power, and the relationship between these concepts and various models of participation and democracy. In it, theoretical accounts of public sector management, particularly the New Public Management (NPM) and New Public Governance (NPG) are analysed; theoretical accounts of democracy, including deliberative democracy and agonistic pluralism, are investigated; and conceptual contributions from the accounting and management control literature are discussed. This thesis builds on one for which a Licentiate in Philosophy was awarded in 2019 (Heath, 2019). That thesis concerned the nature of instrumental and communicative rationality and their implications for public sector organisations, especially in connection with performance evaluation. The role of performance management has long been controversial in the public sector because of the prevalence of imposed performance regimes with well-known perverse incentives and unintended consequences; which, nevertheless, are recurring problems. It was concluded that such regimes persist despite their limitations because they seem to legitimise public services through claims to instrumental rationality. However, a more deliberative and participatory approach to performance management, enacting communicative rationality, could have distinct advantages over the more commonly applied methods. The issues raised there are investigated here in greater theoretical depth, with the key ideas advanced further and to a higher level of analysis. In order to do this, the four papers selected for the Licentiate are enhanced by a further three papers, chosen specifically for this doctoral thesis. All the papers referred to are based on research using a range of methods which had been carried out in various public sector settings. Thus the doctoral thesis comprises: Paper A (about higher education); Paper B (about ambulance services) and Paper C (about public services generally but drawing particularly on ambulance services). Paper A concerns the views of HR professionals in UK Universities on how their role contributes to organisational effectiveness and especially to organisational change. Paper B focuses on cultural transformation and perpetuation in