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Improving Local Government Performance Through Benchmarking sets the record straight on benchmarking and its value for performance improvement in local government.
List of contents
1. Introduction Part I: Benchmarking Overview 2. Benchmarking as a Management Concept 3. Benchmarking in Local Government Part II: Metrics Benchmarking 4. Strategic Choices: Tensions/Decisions at Play in Metrics Benchmarking Initiatives 5. Responses to Metrics Benchmarking Data: Managers, Politicians, and Citizens 6. Metrics Benchmarking Results Part III: Best Practice Benchmarking 7. Vanilla Is Not Benchmarking's Only Flavor 8. Best Practice Benchmarking in Action Part IV: Issues in Benchmarking 9. Learning, Yes, but also Unlearning 10. Common Preference for Benchmarking with Similar Organizations 11. What's the Objective? A Management Report Card or Performance Improvement? 12. Defensiveness in Response to Benchmarking Scores 13. Benchmarking as a Defense Mechanism 14. Is Isomorphism a Threat? 15. Recognition Programs as Quasi-Benchmarking 16. Misapplication of the Benchmarking Label Part V: The Leadership Imperative 17. Leadership for Benchmarking 18. Conclusion
About the author
David N. Ammons is Albert Coates Professor Emeritus of Public Administration and Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. He has written and taught about benchmarking, performance measurement and management, and productivity improvement in local government. For 25 years he served as a faculty advisor to the North Carolina Benchmarking Project. He is a Fellow in the National Academy of Public Administration and has served on the National Performance Management Advisory Commission and the North Carolina Governor's Advisory Committee on Performance Management. He currently serves as a member of the Credentialing Advisory Board of the International City/County Management Association.
