Co-existing systems of performance management: conflicts, coping strategies and emergent combinations

Sector-oriented performance management has been, and still are, a key tool to ensure sound and effective implementation of public policies. Yet with continually more complex and limitless problems to be solved by the public sector, ‘whole of government’-inspired, collaborative practices have emerged. Such practices seek to ensure coherent responses across sectors, and development of innovative solutions by combining formerly separated actors and entities. The result is public organisations with competing ideal types of performance management. The paper starts by presenting divergent, co-existing approaches to performance management in public organizations, then explores how these approaches are put to use in a local real-life setting where sustainability is set high at the agenda. The intent is to identify how different forms of performance management clash, are coped with, and combined in hybrid manners. We see contours of a more integrated system of performance management fueled by an innovative drive among ambitious municipalities. These practices are still in their infancy and in need of support from public policies and knowledge from dedicated research.