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Public Servants as Performers: Embracing New Performance Management Norms in Southeast Asia

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Abstract

In recent years, the normative bases of performance measurement in public administration have significantly changed in favor of empirical, quantifiable, and instrumental criteria, especially under the recent market-driven neoliberal reforms encapsulated as reinvention, new public management, and good governance. While these current trends in performance management may be more compatible with the neo-managerial organizational cultures of Western countries, they are not appropriate for the major administrative traditions found in Asia. In Southeast Asia, in particular, although most countries have embraced the business-like model and adopted the new framework of performance management, managerial behavior has not been adequately reoriented toward empiricist performance criteria. In these countries, performance assessment practices have not adequately moved away from traditional qualitative performance benchmarks. These theory–practice gaps, that is, the difference between what are officially announced and actually practiced, have certain adverse implications in terms of normlessness and inconsistencies in performance management. This chapter explores the market-driven administrative reforms, the corresponding changes in performance management, and their critical consequences for public service performance with specific reference to Southeast Asia where public servants have to embrace the new performance benchmarks.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    M. Shamsul Haque

Authors
  1. M. Shamsul Haque
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Correspondence to M. Shamsul Haque .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Helen Sullivan

  2. Public Service Research Group, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Helen Dickinson

  3. Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Hayley Henderson

Section Editor information

  1. Melbourne School of Government, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Janine O’Flynn

  2. The Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG), Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Janine O’Flynn

  3. The Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG), Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Avery Poole

  4. Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Avery Poole

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Haque, M.S. (2021). Public Servants as Performers: Embracing New Performance Management Norms in Southeast Asia. In: Sullivan, H., Dickinson, H., Henderson, H. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the Public Servant. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29980-4_87

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