Management and organization

Our research

How to improve public service performance is a core question in the public administration field. This research line focuses on the drivers of public service performance across a wide range of public actors. Researchers within this line are involved in all major academic public- and nonprofit management associations, and regularly advice governments at the local, regional, national and supra-national level, as well as public agencies, administrations and nonprofit organizations on how to enhance their public service performance. Specifically, we investigate the impact of management processes and tools, organizational structure, revenue streams, governance capacity and e-governance on different dimensions of public service performance. These dimensions can include more traditional financial indicators such as public spending, efficiency and effectiveness as well as more governance-oriented indicators such as responsiveness to citizens and equity. Indeed, this research line considers public service performance as a multidimensional construct, where multiple stakeholders might have different expectations towards which performance dimension is most important. In sum, this research line provides a systemic perspective on public service performance – thus helping policymakers, managers and other professionals understand what the concept entails, how to measure it (and pitfalls in measurement) as well as how to influence it through sound, evidence-based management and organization.

Publications