Ethics in Bricks on X: “What happens when organizations measure and reward performance of professionals? Employees change their behavior “by avoiding tasks that do not yield quantifiable results.” Link: …” (research paper by Berend van der Kolk and Wesley Kaufmann)
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/03/13
[WaybackSave/Archive] Ethics in Bricks on X: “What happens when organizations measure and reward performance of professionals? Employees change their behavior “by avoiding tasks that do not yield quantifiable results.” Link: …”
This is not limited to organisations having a lot of non-measurable goals: all organisations have those, including the ones in IT.
Research paper (published 7 years ago today, still very relevant) at [Wayback/Archive] Performance measurement, cognitive dissonance and coping strategies: exploring individual responses to NPM-inspired output control | Journal of Management Control
Abstract
The potential of increasing effectiveness and efficiency via performance measurement practices seems clear for scholars and practitioners alike. At the same time, it is often argued that quantitative performance measures fail to do justice to the complex environment of public sector organizations. This paper takes a first step toward incorporating and operationalizing cognitive dissonance theory to make sense of the different beliefs that public workers hold regarding performance measurement practices that are inspired by the New Public Management movement. We analyze a dataset of 34 interviews with employees working in policy departments, and we identify various indications of cognitive dissonance regarding the use of performance measurement at the individual level. Furthermore, we find that employees aim to reduce this dissonance by changing their behavior and by avoiding tasks that do not yield quantifiable results. This paper contributes to the management control literature by exploring how individuals with complex tasks respond to performance measurement practices.
Full text with citations and references is at [Wayback/Archive] (PDF) Performance measurement, cognitive dissonance and coping strategies: Exploring individual responses to NPM-inspired output control
Citations and references at [Wayback/Archive] Performance measurement, cognitive dissonance and coping strategies: exploring individual responses to NPM-inspired out….
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--jeroen
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