Performance evaluation of professional managers by local politicians: survey research in Dutch municipalities

This paper is concerned with performance evaluation of top professional managers by local politicians. Based on the opinions of a small group of experts and a written survey of 262 aldermen, it examines criteria and performance evaluation styles which are used by aldermen of Dutch municipalities - elected politicians - to evaluate performances of professional managers. The paper examines to what extent the large number of aldermen who participated in the survey displayed characteristics of politicians using the ‘operations-conscious’ (or ‘facilitating’) performance evaluation style. Based on previous case research, this style was added to three evaluation styles for the government sector which originated from Hopwood’s evaluation styles for the profit sector. The survey shows that, in general, aldermen judge whether professional managers and their organizations function in a ‘businesslike’ manner. In this respect, evaluation of top managers may be in line with more businesslike and performance-oriented control of government organizations, which is essential to New Public Management. However, aldermen are usually not only or mainly interested in the way managers function in a businesslike manner and in concrete and ‘objective’ data on outputs, costs and efficiency. Aldermen actually evaluate top managers’ performances on a rather wide range of criteria. Subjective impressions of these criteria play an important part in their evaluations. The outcome of the survey is a more detailed description of local politicians’ performance evaluation style and a refinement of the operations-conscious style.