Conference Agenda

Complexity presents significant challenges for public organisations’ management systems. Traditional performance management systems, designed for stable environments, rely on mechanistic thinking and predetermined program logic, making them less effective in addressing complex policy issues.

This study calls for rethinking the traditional approach to performance management to enhance its ability to better address complexity. We argue that collaboration enables government organisations to respond more effectively to complex policy problems. Policy deliberations and consensus-building involving multiple stakeholders lead to knowledge enhancement and, in turn, increase problem-solving capacity. Based on this premise, we align performance management and collaboration, arguing that their mutual interaction leads to the creation of mechanisms for collaboration.

Based on an extensive literature review, an online survey of Lithuanian public servants in strategic management positions, and statistical modelling, this exploratory study aims to assess whether a performance management system that integrates mechanisms for collaboration enhances an organisation’s capacity to deal with complex policy problems. The study found that an organisation’s capacity to deal with complex policy problems increases when collaborative mechanisms are governed by its performance management system. Moreover, the greater the complexity, the more important the development of the performance management system becomes.

This paper contributes to the performance management discourse by offering a collaborative approach to performance management and highlighting its potential to meet evolving complexity challenges. Moreover, the study fully aligns with the PSG II’s on Performance in the Public Sector call to explore new approaches, such as collaborative performance management. By examining mechanisms for collaboration governed throughout the performance management cycle – including collaborative policy dialogues, reflexive performance measurement, and learning forums – the study provides insights into the future developments of performance management. The study calls for a shift from rigid, internally focused performance management frameworks toward more reflexive and interaction-driven approaches that better accommodate the nature of complexity.

Introduction:

Continuity and coordination of health and social care systems for older persons leading to quality in ageing are global priorities for reorienting collaboration. The literature points that health systems decentralization potentially address this challenge. Yet, evidence from assessing health systems decentralization identifies mixed results depending on country characteristics. Given the Nordic ageing population demographics—especially when living far away from hospital—optimal resource allocation represents the ultimate challenge of successfully integrating care. There are three models of decentralized health systems: the state-, the region-, and the municipality-centered model.

Background:

In the Nordic countries, Sweden represents the most advanced case of the municipality-centered model, especially after 2020 and the introduction of the reform “Good Quality and Local Health Care” (God och Nära Vård). The region together with the municipality, share equal and same-level responsibility for hospital and primary health care provided by the regional government and health and social care provided by the local government, with governance of integrating care services and internal check made in collaboration by advisory coordination bodies staffed party political, administrative, professional, and sometimes close-to-user organization stakeholders. This study aimed to examine the long-term effects of collaboration on quality in ageing – created in health and social care systems for older persons – with particular attention on public performance by quality register assessment and responsible innovation for frail older persons living with multi-morbidity with complex needs of integrated health and social care.

Methods:

A longitudinal design enabled the search for systematic patterns between good governance of integrating care services and quality in ageing, before, during and after the reform. Quality in ageing was estimated by a performance measure provided by the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare, indicating a low/lower proportion of unplanned readmissions to hospital among frail older persons living with multi-morbidity in each of Sweden’s 290 municipalities for each year between 2013 and 2023. These public performance data were linked to over fifty coordination bodies repeatedly surveyed by Statistics Sweden after each four-year period of office (in 2015, 2019, 2023) and in 2025, among all members across 17 of Sweden’s 21 regions. The data also consist of the sampled coordination bodies' protocols (2018-2022 period of office). In-depth interviews on change, collaborative capacity building, and quality in ageing were conducted 2023 and 2025 with the key leaders of the most successful coordination body.

Results:

Beyond the explanatory power of path dependence and the necessity of the health and social care system’s governance stability and inner administrative check, the analysis showed few signs of collaboration change in the respondent’s coordination body after the introduction of the new policy. On the contrary, the remaining structures for quality governance declined somewhat. Yet, quality change in the successful case–unaffected by path dependence–transformed from poor to good quality by bottom-up change employing upward policymaking to achieve responsible innovation by strategic absorptive capacity, starting long before the reform. Thus, I argue that collaborative institutional success demands a strategic street-level bottom-up public performance model based on civic traditions, creative destruction, and responsible innovation.

In response to persistent criticisms of the French-speaking Belgian education system, the Pacte pour un Enseignement d’Excellence introduced a governance reform based on accountability principles. This reform establishes a contractualization process between schools and the regulatory authority, requiring schools to develop plans de pilotage—strategic management plans defining objectives and actions for a six-year period. These plans, once negotiated and validated, become contractual commitments aimed at improving both effectiveness and equity in education. This study examines how primary schools in Brussels implement management strategies within this accountability framework. More specifically, it investigates the effectiveness of this regulatory mechanism and its impact on school governance and educational quality. The first section provides a theoretical and historical perspective, defining accountability in education, tracing its introduction into the Belgian system, and explaining the contractualization process. The analysis is framed by neo-institutional theory (Powell & DiMaggio, 1991), particularly the mechanisms of coercive, normative, and mimetic isomorphism, as well as the networked governance approach (Wohsletter et al., 2003; Smith & Wohsletter, 2001), which highlights the role of intermediary actors in regulation. The second section presents empirical findings based on a qualitative methodology, analyzing how schools engage with this new governance model. The study contributes to broader discussions on the effects of contemporary education reforms by examining the tensions and transformations induced by an accountability-driven approach to school management and on improving the performance of the educational system.