Performance in Italian Ministries: individual appraisal systems and information use

Scholars have pointed out the need for improvement and refinement in public management research. More specifically, management practices in the public sector, including performance appraisal, are very important areas of study since in most countries government organizations employ a substantial part of the workforce (Daley, 1992). Following the process of modernization that the public sector has undergone in the last decades, with Decree n. 150/2009 the Italian public administrations were called upon to implement individual performance appraisal systems for their entire staff, with the aim of promoting the growth and development of their personnel’s competence. Moreover, the topic of performance appraisal is also becoming increasingly relevant from a research perspective. Aiming both to understand the extent of the implementation of the reform and the relevance (in terms of use) of performance information we try to answer to some basic questions (why, what, and how) with reference to design of individual performance appraisal systems we conducted a content analysis of the 99 documents produced by the 13 Italian Ministries from 2011 to 2013