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Civil Service Systems and Responsibility, Accountability and Performance: A Multi-Dimensional Approach

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Comparative Civil Service Systems in the 21st Century

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Abstract

Performance is considered to stand at the very heart of modern public management efforts aiming at the improvement of public sector productivity and quality. Notwithstanding the often presumed modernity, performance improvement is really a venerable topic, the roots stretching back in time to the beginnings of modern government and the study of public administration starting with the influential work of Frederick Taylor (1911, 2009) and Morris Cooke (1918: see also Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011: 106 and Schachter, 1989). In its most essential meaning, performance relates to actions taken as a response to a particular demand more or less resulting in the accomplishment of a particular task or tasks. This response contains both a collective (or more precisely formulated: organizational) and an individual component.

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Authors
  1. Gerrit S. A. Dijkstra
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Public Administration, Leiden University, The Netherlands

    Frits M. van der Meer (CAOP Professor of Comparative Civil Service and Public Sector Reform) & Jos C. N. Raadschelders (Professor and Associate Director of Faculty, affiliated Professor of Public Administration) (CAOP Professor of Comparative Civil Service and Public Sector Reform) &  (Professor and Associate Director of Faculty, affiliated Professor of Public Administration)

  2. John Glenn School of Public Affairs, Ohio State University, USA

    Jos C. N. Raadschelders (Professor and Associate Director of Faculty, affiliated Professor of Public Administration) (Professor and Associate Director of Faculty, affiliated Professor of Public Administration)

  3. Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

    Theo A. J. Toonen (Dean, Chair in Institutional Governance and Public Administration) (Dean, Chair in Institutional Governance and Public Administration)

  4. Delft and Leiden University, The Netherlands

    Theo A. J. Toonen (Dean, Chair in Institutional Governance and Public Administration) (Dean, Chair in Institutional Governance and Public Administration)

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© 2015 Gerrit S.A. Dijkstra

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Dijkstra, G.S.A. (2015). Civil Service Systems and Responsibility, Accountability and Performance: A Multi-Dimensional Approach. In: van der Meer, F.M., Raadschelders, J.C.N., Toonen, T.A.J. (eds) Comparative Civil Service Systems in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137491459_15

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