ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how the notion of performance is used in textbooks on management accounting and control, in academic management journals, and in public management literature. It introduces specific subsets of management literature on performance—management accounting textbooks, academic management journals, and public management literature—and describes how performance is apprehended, how it is endowed with meaning, and how it is used. The performance of public organizations, as constructed in public management literature, may therefore very well undergo perceptible changes soon. The chapter focuses on the measurement of performance. As a dependent variable, performance is the yardstick along which one tests the quality of the managerial tools. The ideology of managerialism, Christopher Politt continues, has invaded the public sector during the past decade or two, where it has been propagating specific models of organizational functioning. Academic management journals, to summarize, place the imperative of performance upon all aspects of organizational life.
