Abstract:
The problem examined in this thesis falls under the broad question of the nature of
effect of performance measurement and management (PMM) on organizational
performance. Responding to the unsuccessful attempts of the current literature to
produce conclusive evidence of the effect of PMM on performance and building on the
recent studies documenting the effect of PMM on organizational processes, the work
reported in this thesis employs the organizational routines perspective as an analytical
lens for examining the way in which a particular PMM practice – a performance
management review meeting – affects organizational processes that generate
performance. More specifically, the study uses Feldman and Pentland’s (2003) model of
routines in order to explore the ways in which organizational actors experience the
ostensive aspect of organizational routines in the context of a performance management
review meeting.
Based on two case studies conducted in the UK in 2009, the thesis develops a model
suggesting that performance management review meetings influence the dynamics of
organizational routines by affecting a number of specific processes that constitute the
engagement of the participants at the meeting with the ostensive aspect of the routine.
The results highlight the critical role of attention in these processes and suggest a
number of ways in which the attention of the participants may be influenced. As such,
the study explicates the micro dynamics of the link between a PMM intervention in the
form of the performance management review meeting and the organizational processes
that generate performance, thus making a step towards increasing the understanding of
the direct impact of PMM on performance.
