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Many governmental results-based management systems have not produced the expected positive effects. This article analyzes the reasons for this common disappointment by looking at three components of results-based management-results-specific information, capacities, and incentives-and concludes that incentives are often the least developed. It then synthesizes a simple framework for evaluating the efficacy of results-oriented incentives. To be successful, results-specific incentives must be tailored to fit four program characteristics: timeliness, political environment, clarity of the cause-and-effect chain, and tightness of focus. This framework suggests that some systems put too exclusive an emphasis on budgetary incentives and could be strengthened by emphasizing personnel-system rewards, especially those that look beyond business models.Governments throughout the United States have recently implemented similar major management reforms. The single new approach has been given many names, such as strategic management, performance-based management, results-based management, outcome management, and New Public Management. In this article, we will call all such approaches, somewhat arbitrarily, results-based management. We will also adopt the common convention that results is a synonym for outcomes, and that an outcome is any agency-produced effect on individuals who do not work for that agency.Although they have different names, almost all of the results-based management approaches share some core components. When compared to traditional systems, results-based management systems generally put a greater emphasis on strategic planning; on performance measurement, especially the measurement of program outcomes; on customer satisfaction as one of the desired outcomes; on results-oriented objectives, including both long-range and shorter-range goals; on delivering many of those outcomes through cross-functional teams and empowered front-line employees; and on the use of business-like process-improvement tools 1 (Osborne and Plastrik 1997; U.S. Commerce Department 2004a, 2004b).Besides sharing many core system components, agencies with results-based systems also share the belief that their new systems will make their organizations more outcome oriented, proactive, and agile, leading to greater overall effectiveness.

Do top managers view the implementation of results-based management tools differently than do lower-level workers?A total of 4,186 workers in eight state departments of revenue were surveyed about the deployment and the impacts of nine results-based management tools in their agency. The top hierarchical levels were consistently, and often dramatically, more optimistic than lower-levels. The largest differences were generally found in the assessments of worker participation, and in the assessments of the customer relations tools and cross-functional coordination tools. Follow-up interviews were used to suggest reasons for the consistent perceptual differences. Six overlapping causes were suggested by agency members: top isolation, bottom spin, different perspective ranges, inadequate communication, top selective perception, and lower level cynicism.These findings suggest that management reformers must be prepared to bridge very large perceptual differences between levels, and a number of possible bridging approaches are discussed. The findings also suggest that survey-based public management research will often be misleading if based on surveys of just top managers.

The government of Turkey has attempted to substantially improve the management of its public hospitals. However, an analysis of the performance of the quality certified hospitals finds only minor improvements. This study seeks to explain these disappointing results by interviewing 46 hospital managers and employees about the successes and failures of the management reform effort. The interviews suggest that traditional Turkish organisational culture often hinders attempts to decrease hierarchy, but, more positively, it also encourages the use of frontline teams and group rewards. Moreover, Turkey's hybrid system of allowing public doctors to maintain private practices has provided doctors with both the resources and the incentives to fight management reform efforts. Finally, organisational decentralisation in Turkey has evoked fierce political opposition, ironically even from many pro-modernising forces that fear it could increase the power of Islamic fundamentalists. Turkey's experience suggests a number of broader points about management reform in non-western societies. It suggests that decentralisation can often impede, rather than strengthen the other aspects of management reform; that a hybrid market organisation is often harder to move toward market efficiencies than a purely governmental one; and that national cultures should help guide the order in which reform tools are implemented. 1 ISO 9001 certification is most closely associated with 'quality management'. Although the distinctions are not always consistently followed in the literature, 'New Public Management' often connotes internal management reforms combined with a strong emphasis on market-like incentives and privatisation, while 'quality management' often connotes internal management reforms alone. The Turkish government has indicated that it hopes to eventually move its health sector toward vouchers and other forms of privatisation (i.e. toward New Public Management), but those major changes are well in the future. In the interim, it is trying to improve quality. 2 ISO certification criteria may in some cases understate the management tools that have been implemented by the certified hospitals because most of the certified hospitals have attempted to add additional management (i.e. quality) improvements beyond the ISO requirements. This would be of concern if we found major measurable efficiency and effectiveness improvements because then we would be unable to answer whether it was ISO 9001 or 'ISO 9001 plus some additional management tools' that caused the improvements. Because we do not find major improvements, any additions of yet more quality-oriented tools simply strengthen our case that implementation problems are at least a partial cause for the disappointing results. 3 The only study of the broad impact of recent management changes on Turkish hospitals is Ates (2004). However, the Ates study focuses on very different questions than does this study.