OCAP 1.2017 – Comparative Analysis of the Performance Evaluation Systems of Public Sector Employees

Individual performance evaluation is an ongoing challenge involving both public and private organizations, human resource experts, executives, and employees. As an employee of the United States Office of Personnel Management once said, “if anyone can solve performance evaluation problem, he should be entitled to the Nobel, the Pulitzer and the Heisman in the same year”. In addition, government reforms in the 1980s, commonly referred to as New Public Management, promoted the adoption of performance evaluation in the public sector. These reforms not only had to deal with the typical phenomenon of resistance to the introduction of such systems, but also with the specific constraints found in the public sector (extensive trade union presence, the unique status of civil servants, the type of employment contract, and the need to provide equal employment opportunities). Despite being still widely adopted, performance evaluation systems are often reworked and tweaked and the consequences of such adjustments are never fixed or unequivocal. Thus, the book has two main objectives: firstly, to describe the performance evaluation systems for public sector executives and non-executives working for Central Government in a sample of European countries. Secondly, to identify any relevant common reform trends or any that are particularly innovative for the evaluation of government executives and non-executives.