Time-Cost Data in Agency Administration: Efficiency Controls in Family and Children's Service

This article presents a critical and comparative examination of some of the operational problems that have resulted from attempts to develop time and cost data systems in private family and child welfare agencies. The elaboration of the limitations of performance measurement systems, the uses that agency managements make of these tools, and some of the organizational consequences of such systems illustrate the role these measurements play in the dynamics of organizational life in social welfare agencies.