应我院邀请，芬兰坦佩尔大学管理学院（School of Management, University of Tampere）Jarmo Vakkuri教授来我院访问，访问期间他将就自己近期研究为我院师生作讲座，详情如下：

题目：Exploring the institutional space between public and private sectors –Performance measurement problems in hybrid organizations

时间：12月14日(星期一)上午10：00—12：00

地点：求是楼216 （求是楼东门进入）

欢迎有兴趣的老师和同学积极参加。

附: 讲座介绍

Jarmo Vakkuri

Professor, University of Tampere, School of Management

FI-33014 University of Tampere, FINLAND

email jarmo.vakkuri@uta.fi

Abstract

Forms of organizing social activities, and institutions have always been ubiquitous but never self-explanatory. There is a long-standing discussion on markets, hierarchies, networks and hybrids exploring the richness of social organizing (Powell 1990; Ouchi 1979; Williamson 1985). With respect to pursuing important societal activities, such as improving the level of education, maintaining health and keeping up infrastructure, it is sometimes difficult to disentangle public organizations and activities from private efforts. It has become commonplace to use the concept of hybrids to depict the institutional space between the public and private sectors. It is possible to talk about hybrids in the context of markets and hierarchies as well as in the context of public and private forms of action.

Hybridity is not an easy concept. Hybrids have been conceptualized in two ways in the public administration literature (Skelcher & Smith 2015). First, they may be treated as a separate third category in forms of organizing public activities. The mandate of an organization has been given by public authority, but there is more autonomy and a more business-like setting for organizational action. Second, hybrids have been treated as combinations of business organizations and public bureaucracies. Discussion of social enterprises is an indication of this approach. However, there is no scientific consensus regarding the ways in which hybrid organizations ought to be theoretically positioned with regard to other sectors of society.

The objective of this lecture is to explore performance measurement problems in hybrid organizations. Kelvin’s dictum, “When you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind” (McCloskey 1984, 323), has come to serve as a persuasive argument for developing public sector performance evaluation systems. However, the research tradition on performance measurement has relied on an entity-based assumption of organizational systems, which has made it complicated to understand service delivery with hybrid forms of governance and lateral accountabilities. The principles have originated from systems theory with clear-cut boundaries to environment and other organizations and stakeholders. This assumption does not work well in the contemporary context of public service delivery, where achieving social impacts necessitates distributed intelligence and collaborative forms of governance among public, private and non-profit organizations as well as the users of public services. There is a yet unrealized potential in understanding links between hybrid organizations and their performances (Grossi, Reichard & Vakkuri, forthcoming).

In hybrid settings, performance metrics are subject to contrasting expectations, interests and ambiguities (Vakkuri 2010). First, demonstrating public value through performance metrics is difficult due to the problems of effectiveness measurement. It is easier for public agencies and private firms to prove their efficiencies and procedural optimalities instead of the effects of services on users, citizens and society at large. Second, comparing relative efficiencies in public and private value creation becomes complicated with the absence of unequivocal measures of performance. This problem is widely known, for instance, in attempts to compare true costs and benefits of contracting out public service delivery. Third, according to classical principles of performance measurement (Ijiri 1975), if the object of measurement turns into “hybrid,” the instruments of quantification should be able to trace that hybridity (Stark 2009). Metrics ought to be “hybrid” as well. However, theoretical thinking in current performance measurement systems is too inflexible for that purpose. In terms of validity and relevance, measurements are at their best with stable measurement objects and institutional environments as well as easily verifiable processes, outputs and outcomes. Accordingly, many performance evaluation systems in hard-to-measure environments aim at balancing between contrasting conceptualizations and measurement practices.

Too little attention has been given to rationales, forms and outcomes of uses of performance information. Metrics problems have been primarily understood as a design problem. It is important to discuss performance metrics not merely as a solution to performance improvement problems, but also as an instrument for creating new problems and contributing to new long-term institutional change in hybrid organizations (Vakkuri 2013). 

References

Ijiri, Y. (1975). Theory of Accounting Measurement. Sarasota (FL): America Accounting Association.

McCloskey, D.N. (1984). The Rhetoric of Economics, in Caldwell, B (ed.) Appraisal and Criticism in Economics–A Book of Readings, Boston: Allen & Unwin.

Ouchi, W. (1979). A Conceptual Framework for the Design of Organizational Control Mechanisms. Management Science,25(9), 833-848.

Powell, W.W. (1990). Neither Market nor Hierarchy: Network Forms of Organization. Research in Organizational Behavior,12, 295-336.

Skelcher C. & Smith S.R. (2015). Theorizing Hybridity: Institutional Logics, Complex Organization and Actor Identities; The Case of Nonprofits, Public Administration 93(2), 433-448.

Stark D. (2009). The Sense of Dissonance. Accounts of Worth in Economic Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Vakkuri, J. (2010). Struggling with Ambiguity – Public Managers as Users of NPM-Oriented Management Instruments, Public Administration, 88(4), 999-1024.

Vakkuri, J. (2013). Interpretive Schemes in Public Sector Performance: Measurements Creating Managerial Problems in Local Government’, International Journal of Public Sector Performance Management, 2 (2), 156–174.

Williamson, O.E. (1985). The Economic Institutions of Capitalism. Firms, Markets, Relational Contracting. The Free Press.