Overview

Questioning Performance Measurement: Metrics, Organizations and Power is the first book to interrogate the organizational turn towards performance metrics critically. Performance measurement is used to evaluate a diverse range of activities throughout the private, public and non-governmental sectors. But in an increasingly data driven world, what does it really mean to measure 'performance'? Taking a sociology of quantification perspective, this book traces the rise of performance measurement, questions its methods and objectivity, and examines the social significance of the flood of numbers through which value is represented and actors are held accountable. An illuminating read for students, scholars and practitioners across Organization Studies, Sociology, Business and Management, Public Policy and Administration.

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9781526461858

Table of Contents

Reviews

Questioning Performance Measurement provides an engaging and thoroughly researched analysis of a key instrument of organizational steering and governance. A work of critique that never allows itself to be merely polemical, this volume makes a significant contribution to Critical Management Studies and helps us better understand how contemporary organizations think and operate. Alan Scott, Professor of Sociology at the University of New England -- Alan Scott If you are interested in how individuals, organizations, and entire societies are being increasingly shaped by the application of metrics that capture `performance' - and everyone should be - this excellent book by Guy Redden is insightful, timely and a great read. It provides an important discussion of the social and political implications of measuring everything. Professor Jenny M Lewis, Professor of Public Policy at The University of Melbourne -- Professor Jenny M Lewis

This book is well-written, intensely focused, and challenging, possibly disruptive to an administrative mindset that favors easy answers. Redden's text goes beyond the typical rhetoric of performance measurement to discuss unintended consequences of these structures on organizations and the connection, to the extent it exists, between measurement activity and improvement and enhancement. I heartily recommend the text to those interested in performance measurement in research and practice, and as a great addition to courses on program evaluation or even public budgeting as a supplementary volume. -- Christopher Atkinson * International Journal of Public Administration * An engaging and thoroughly researched analysis of a key instrument of organizational steering and governance. A work of critique that never allows itself to be merely polemical, this volume makes a significant contribution to Critical Management Studies and helps us better understand how contemporary organizations think and operate. -- Alan Scott If you are interested in how individuals, organizations, and entire societies are being increasingly shaped by the application of metrics that capture `performance' - and everyone should be - this excellent book by Guy Redden is insightful, timely and a great read. It provides an important discussion of the social and political implications of measuring everything. -- Professor Jenny M Lewis

Author Information

Guy Redden is Associate Professor in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. His research in the field of cultural economy centres upon the diffusion of contemporary economic rationalities through media, popular culture and institutions. A central theme of his work is how patterns of commodification and marketization interact with cultural change and social reform, especially with regard to the broad formative context of ‘neoliberalism’. He has co-edited two books and authored or co-authored over forty articles, most recently in Television and New Media and Critical Sociology.

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