Three spheres of performance governance: Spanning the boundaries from single-organization focus towards a partnership network

This article argues that one of the reasons for unsatisfactory performance is the single-sighted and narrow scope of performance management models applied in most of the OECD countries.

Performance targets are normally set from a single organization's perspective, which is not sufficient given the complex nature of societal problems that public agencies deal with. In the worst case, single-unit performance targeting and maximization of an organization's self-interest produces suboptimal results rather than positive impacts for society as a whole.
After a critical assessment of existing performance management models, we suggest a more comprehensive approach. In our extended framework, the overall performance has been broken down into three fields of performance.

The first field covers the enabling performance factors such as learning, process development and resources. The second field consists of a single organization's performance targets, i.e. measurable outputs delivered to customers and immediate results generated by these activities. The third field of our framework is called the multi-organizational sphere of effectiveness where positive results can only be created by multi-actor performance clusters. We conclude by discussing the potential strengths and weaknesses of the framework.