Performance Management in Public Services ‘Before’ New Public Management: The Case of NHS Acute Hospitals 1948-1962

Abstract

This article discusses two accounts of the history of performance management in public services. Performance management is defined as the use of performance indicators and management prescriptions, designed to improve such measured performance, to achieve public service performance objectives. In one account, particularly found in the prescriptive New Public Management (NPM) literature, performance management in public services is seen as effectively absent before the emergence of NPM as a reform programme. In contrast the public management literature includes a second account which both indicates the significance of a concern with performance management in public services and the deployment of a variety of relevant techniques such as performance-related pay, management accounting and performance indicators ‘before NPM’. The article seeks to develop this second account by presenting an historical case study of financial and non-financial performance measurement in National Health Service acute hospitals in the period from the beginning of the Service to the publication of the Hospital Plan. The article concludes by examining the implications of the case study for broader debates in public sector management.