One of the most-pervasive debates in literature on managing people is whether using "hard" or "soft" approaches produces better organizational performance--those seeking to influence behavior by pressuring or by nurturing. This paper examines this question in the context of a...

Little empirical work exists measuring if interagency collaborations delivering public services produce better outcomes, and none looking inside the black box at collaboration management practices. We examine whether there are collaboration management practices associated with improved...

Senior government executives make many decisions, not-infrequently difficult ones. Cognitive limitations and biases preclude individuals from making fully value-maximizing choices. And the “groupthink” tradition has highlighted ways group-aided decision-making can fail to live up to its...

The literature on the use of performance measurement in government has featured prominent attention to hypothesized unintended dysfunctional consequences such measurement may produce. We conceptualize these dysfunctional consequences as involving either effort substitution (reducing effort on...

We analyze a model in which incentives in one period on one task can affect output more broadly through learning. If agents can invest in human or organizational capital, then output will increase both before and after short-term incentives. We develop a model of these effects, and then we...

Over the last decade there has been a dramatic expansion in use of performance measurement and performance management in government - using measures as a tool to improve performance along dimensions measured. Using this potentially powerful tool to try to remedy underperformance in government,...