Arrested development: how performance regimes constrain changes to public sector performance measurement

Public sector organizations increasingly operate within broader performance regimes—the wider systems of rules, actors, and practices that shape how performance is measured and managed—yet little research has examined how these regimes enable or block attempts of public sector organizations to redesign their performance measurement (PM) systems. This study addresses that gap by developing an analytical framework built around the concept of lock-in mechanisms, which provides a structured way to identify regulatory, material, behavioral and discursive barriers to the redesign of public sector PM. This framework is then applied to the performance regime governing Danish employment services, where municipal job centers are actively trying to redesign their PM systems to better reflect client experiences and value creation. Our findings reveal that redesign efforts are constrained by lock-in mechanisms operating at three distinct levels: within the institutional context, mechanisms entrench upward accountability as the dominant purpose of PM; at the level of performance actors, mechanisms preserve rigid boundaries between those who are measured and those who do the measuring; and at the level of performance interventions, mechanisms sustain top-down uses of performance information, limiting more bottom-up approaches.