Special Edition on Performance Management

Performance evaluation is more than an academic exercise, a matter of methodologies and numbers. How performance is measured affects not only what the public know about the police, but also the character of police operations and the management climate. Because performance evaluations establish priorities, incentives and requirements, they are much too important to be left to technicians. Performance measurement should be viewed as an integral, ongoing part of the management of policing. (Bayley, 1996 ) The idea of managing performance in the public sector is closely tied to the managerialist trends of the late twentieth century. Managerialism has provided a base for setting, measuring and benchmarking performance outcomes in the public sector. Manning (in this issue) reminds us that as early as 1988 , Moore and Trojanowicz argued that the police organization was a form of ‘public corporation’ and should ‘compete for and maintain a market niche—ensuring and sustaining profitability’. And it did. As part of the shift to new public management principles, police services in most Anglophone and many European countries have embraced a corporate culture that has seen performance measurement and related processes as key management tools both for assessing individual and organizational performance. The era of managerialism has made it clear that police organizations are expected to deliver value through the socially and fiscally responsible allocation of resources and ensure effective service delivery.