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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.
List of contents
The Performance Revolution
What is Performance Measurement? Nuts, Bolts and Critical Issues
Perspectives on Performance Measurement
Making the Numbers: Performance Measurement in Business
Magical Numbers: Performance Measurement and Public Goods
Rethinking Performance Culture
About the author
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.
Summary
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'?
Report
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
