What middle managers do to manage performance in the public sector

Performance management continues to be an important area of research in the public sector, especially with reducing budgets and the recognition of operational delivery as a core discipline in the UK civil service. The performance management literature, in all sectors, treats operational and people performance as separate topics. Middle managers were historically seen as an expensive overhead and, even now, little is known about what they do to manage performance. Equally, the research has focussed on the relationship between a manager and their direct report and not about their wider role in motivating their work-unit. This study of 20 in-depth, qualitative interviews in a large, operational, UK government department asked middle managers what they did to manage performance. The study found four groups of activities. Middle managers monitor and oversee the performance of their work-unit, identify causes of performance gaps and supervise mitigating actions. They manage, coach and develop their frontline managers. They engage directly with the frontline staff of their work-unit: regularly investing time in this, despite being busy. They manage their own change projects and play a key role in supporting staff in coping with corporate- level change. A further, unexpected, finding was that different sub-groups of middle managers, with different demographic profiles, had differences in their attitudes and approaches to performance management. The contributions of this study are: (i) an integration of the performance management literature: with a proposed integrated model of performance management; (ii) further development of the concept of the performance gap; (iii) demonstration that the relationship between the middle manager and frontline staff is a critical part of performance management. The implications of these findings, for middle managers and their organisations, are discussed. Further research is recommended.