Abstract
Is New Public Management (NPM) a threat to motivation in public organizations? Large parts of the public administration literature seem concerned that it might be the case. Through an in-depth case study of the implementation of a NPM-inspired appraisal system in the European Commission, an organization which has traditionally branded itself on strong intrinsic and altruistic motivation among employees, this claim is investigated. The case study concludes that, while the organization formally balances the two different approaches to motivation of employees, implementing performance management while underlining the importance the European project as well, in practice it is not possible to have it both ways. The performance appraisal system is undermined from below and transformed by employees and middle management into a system that is similar to the system in place before it was introduced.
Introduction
The aim of this article is to explore the consequences of implementing a central element of New Public Management (NPM), performance appraisal, in a public organization. In recent years there has been an upsurge in the literature dealing with the consequences of NPM (Christensen & Lægreid, 2007). Theories of ethics management have drawn attention to the possibly declining ethical standards of civil servants due to NPM (e.g., Maesschalck, 2004, pp. 465-489 for overview); theories of public values have questioned whether NPM or the American vision of “reinventing government” (Osborne & Gaebler, 1992) are blind to values that are particular to the public context and as a consequence undermines these values (e.g., Bozeman, 2007). Finally, a large literature on Public Service Motivation (PSM) has appeared, which warns that civil servants are motivated by things other than monetary gain (see, for example, surveys by Crewson, 1997; or Houston, 2000; Perry & Hondeghem, 2008), and Perry and Wise have gone so far as to argue that the “public choice movement” is partly to blame for the lack of trust in government in the United States, due to its lack of recognition of the importance of public interest and sacrifice among civil servants (Perry & Wise, 1990, p. 367). Similarly, Le Grand has analyzed a move from viewing civil servants as knights to knaves; from altruistic to self-interested actors (Le Grand, 2003). This, according to Le Grand, can lead to a loss of altruism among civil servants (Le Grand, 2003, p. 46-47).
There are a number of depressing predictions relating to the consequences of NPM in public administrations. NPM and its focus on civil servants as utility maximizing rational actors is expected to undermine elements of “publicness” that are essential both to motivate civil servants and to ensure that public services are delivered. It is feared that NPM might be crowding out intrinsic “public” motivation, using the terms of Frey and Le Grand (Frey, 1997; Le Grand, 2003).
But the literature does not agree on the consequences of implementing NPM inspired tools. Some point to the possible trade-offs; for example, Boyne et al. would argue that NPM enhances efficiency and responsiveness but weakens equity (Boyne, Farrell, Law, Powell, & Walker, 2003), while Pratchett and Wingfield argue that civil servants working in an environment where competition is emphasized, generally has a weaker score on public service ethos but the exposure to market measures at the same time promotes an evolution of a public service ethos (Pratchett & Wigfield, 1996, pp. 647-648). On the other hand, and more specifically, Kolthoff shows that performance measurement improves integrity (Kolthoff, 2007).
Basically, theoretical predictions of the consequences of NPM on public administration raise more questions than they answer. This article aims at investigating how NPM managerial tools, here specifically performance appraisals, are implemented in a public organization. The article asks whether it is possible to have it both ways, motivating employees through both a tale of the public nature of the organization and extrinsic rewards, or if the concern voiced in some the literature is justified: that implementing NPM comes at the cost of something important in a public context. Can altruism and performance appraisal coexist?
Management policies in the European Commission (henceforward the Commission) are the object of study. The Commission is a central part of the European Union (EU) performing as an advanced secretariat for the organization. Its competences go well beyond the competences held by other executives of intergovernmental organizations. The Commission holds the right of initiative in the Union, enforces the Treaties in relation to member states, and heads international negotiations on behalf of the EU in, for example, WTO (Nugent, 2001, pp. 10-14, consolidated Treaty, art. 17). The organization is situated in Brussels and had 25,215 employees in 2007 (European Commission, 2007a, p. 20).
The Commission is chosen as a case here, because its officials are traditionally seen as having a particularly strong focus on the public interest (as, for example, argued by Cini, 1996, p. 40; Coombes, 1970). In her 1997 survey, Hooghe found that Commission officials in general identified more strongly with the European Union (EU)/“the European Project” than average European citizens (Hooghe, 2007). The story of the idealism driving Commission officials has played a strong role internally in the organization toward employees, and externally when the Commission is to describe itself, and in parts of the literature on its role in the EU as, for example, seen in federalist and neo-functional approaches to the EU (for an excellent overview, see Rosamond, 2000). The claim is not that all Commission officials are driven by altruism 1 but that the story of it, as well as surveys by, for example, Hooghe underline the importance traditionally assigned to altruism in the organization. With the 2000 Kinnock reforms of management in the Commission (European Commission, 2000a, 2000b), an appraisal system that was based on a hard type of performance management, focused on the individual level, was implemented. The Commission is a good place to look if one wants to explore the clash between altruism and self-interestedness, at least rhetorically, because a clash is clearly to be expected. At the same time, a caveat needs to be made: it is clear that the same conclusions may not be reached in organizations with weaker altruistic motivation. I will return to this point in the concluding section.
The clash is examined through an in-depth qualitative analysis of the role ascribed to altruism and self-interestedness by the organizational management as reflected in the value statements and the appraisal system in the Commission. Furthermore, the implementation of the appraisal system is analyzed. The analysis will play out at two levels inspired by Brunsson’s distinction between talk, decisions, and actions as organizational output (Brunsson, 2002, p. 27). Here, talk and decisions are combined into a level of Commission rhetoric in which the formal story of motivation is told, and an action level, where the implementation of the appraisal system is analyzed.
On the rhetoric level, the empirical material mainly consists of relevant Commission documents. These have been identified first through a search in the document database in the Commission. 2 This initial search was expanded partly through suggestions from interviewees partly through snowballing from obtained documents.
The analysis of the actual implementation builds partly on Commission documents as above, partly on 48 semistructured interviews. Three types of interviews are used. First, interviews with Commission officials with a special expertise in management: here, references are made to named individuals. Second, all employees in a particular unit in the Directorate General for Agriculture and Rural Development were interviewed. These have been anonymized, but are referred to as DG AGRI, and the date of the interview is given. Finally, a number of background interviews were carried out with commission officials in different DGs and stakeholders outside the Commission. These were used to corroborate the findings regarding practices in one unit and provide the basis for generalizations for the entire Commission. 3 All interviews were carried out between October 2007 and February 2008. Interviews with Commission officials done in 2005, and lastly in 2010 for other studies have confirmed the interpretations presented here. Data is validated through a process of qualitative triangulation (Van de Ven, 2007, p. 284). 4
Generally, the interviews focused broadly on management. In this context, the interviewees themselves typically mentioned the appraisal system as a main point of dissatisfaction in management in the Commission. The question-guides hence did not contain specific questions regarding different forms of motivation or the appraisal system, but the issue came up across interviews (for more on the data material, see Grøn 2010). What is important to notice in relation to the claims made based on the interviews is that whereas the general description of how the appraisal system was implemented was consistent between employees, not all employees pointed to this as being demotivating. The interviewees carried out in a specific unit are the ones most suitable for dealing with this issue since they were the most in-depth. It is hence important to state that concluding the appraisal system was demotivating and was not based on direct questions but on the way they were described by interviewees without them being probed by the interviewer. As will be clear from examples below, words such as “demotivating” or “frustrating” or “waste of time,” were interpreted by the author as signifying a demotivating effect. Among the interviewees in a particular unit, this description was present in 7 out of 10 interviews carried out. Of the three who did not evaluate the appraisal system as demotivating, two had not yet been through the evaluation.
While most findings can be corroborated through written material, some are based on interviews alone. Here, it is important to keep in mind that, for example, explanations of why the appraisal system failed in the Commission are interpretations made by individuals within the organization. I will discuss the necessary precautions in the course of the analysis.
By doing an in-depth case study, the article will be able to shed light on how the two management approaches play out in relation to each other empirically. While this does not lead to a general theory of what happens in public organizations when NPM is implemented, it will hopefully inspire future thought on using NPM-based tools in a public context. Furthermore, by examining how the managerial tools coexist in practice through an in-depth case study, this article provides a different approach to the question of crowding than do quantitative studies. First and foremost, this study does not rely on self-reported accounts of motivation (as is, for example, argued to be a weakness of the study carried out by Oh & Lewis, 2009, p. 164) and allows for a different kind of qualitative evaluation. While the evaluations by employees are included, they do not stand alone in the overall assessment.
The article proceeds in the following manner. First the theoretical concepts are developed leading to a number of different theoretically derived scenarios. Second, the talk of knights and knaves in the Commission is analyzed and finally, the way the talk of knights and knaves affected the implementation of performance management is analyzed.
Not Having It Both Ways: Knights and Knaves in Public Organizations
We now turn to a clarification of the main concepts of the article. First we define motivation. We then turn to Le Grand’s conceptualization of two forms of civil servants: knights and knaves. Then we discuss Le Grand’s predictions of possible consequences when knights are motivated as knaves and the other way around. Finally, to develop the framework for our analysis, these insights are combined with Brunsson’s distinction between organizational output as talk, decisions, and actions (Brunsson, 2002, p. 27). Le Grand acknowledges that the way individuals are managed frame their actions; basically, the management of the organization can through its actions shift employees from being motivated by altruism to being motivated by monetary rewards. Adding to this insight that both what organizations do and what they say is important, a framework for analysis will be developed.
First of all, the concept of motivation should be defined. Le Grand defines motivation as “the internal desires or preferences that incite action” (Le Grand, 2003, p. 2). This definition contains two main elements: first that motivation comprises internal desires or preferences and second, that it incites action. Le Grand argues that motivation is a “psychological state” (Le Grand, 2003, p. 25) and one among several factors that determine action. Motivation is a force which is internal to the individual. By coining it as both internal desires and preferences, Le Grand plays into two different conceptions of what makes individuals act: the logic of appropriateness versus logic of consequentiality (March & Olsen, 1989, p. 160). While this might be perceived as a contradiction, the underlying point of distinguishing between different forms of motivation is exactly to acknowledge that both kinds might be at play.
Le Grand presents two types of public employees, displaying different kinds of motivation:
Knaves can be defined as self-interested individuals who are motivated to help others only if by so doing they will serve their private interests; whereas knights are individuals who are motivated to help others for no private reward, and indeed who may undertake such activities to the detriment of their own private interest (Le Grand, 2003, p. 27).
After establishing these two kinds of motivation, Le Grand goes on to argue that the way civil servants are managed frames their behavior either as knights or knaves. In its most simple form; treat a knight as a knave, and (s)he will start behaving as one (Le Grand, 2003, p. 40). Le Grand however expands this claim and argues that sometimes, depending on the size of the monetary incentive and the preferences of the receiver, monetary incentives can also emphasize knightish behavior (Le Grand, 2003, p.43). Both crowding-in and crowding-out effects exists (see also Frey, 1997).
Le Grand acknowledges that employees are affected by how their management tries to manage them. It is however less clear exactly how far initiatives need to go before they affect employees. Overlooking the literature on public management reforms, and not least with regard to performance appraisal, it becomes clear that quite often, they do not work as intended, or move much beyond mere “talk” of appraisal (see discussion in Bowman, 2010; Dahlström & Lapuente, 2010; Demmke, Hammerschmid, & Meyer, 2007; Harris, 2001). Le Grand’s approach is developed with sensitivity toward different levels of implementation following Brunsson. As stated above, the analysis will look at Commission talk and how this affects the implementation of performance management.
Knowing that individuals can shift from being a knight to a knave, of course emphasizes the importance of management policies. The interest of this article is to clarify the consequences of implementation of performance appraisal in the Commission. Different scenarios can be deducted from the literature. First and foremost, drawing on Brunsson (2002), the appraisal system can be implemented (a) both at the rhetoric and the action level or (b) only at the rhetoric level. For each of these scenarios, three subscenarios can be developed. (a) Crowding-in: The Commission improved motivation, underlining knightish motivation with performance appraisal. (b) Crowding-out: The Commission transformed employees from knights to knaves, leading to either diminished motivation or the same level of motivation due to substitution. (c) No change was brought about; the changes in appraisal did not affect motivation at all. The possible scenarios are summarized in Table 1.
Scenarios for motivation effects
We now turn to a discussion first of how Commission officials are talked about as knights and knaves and, following this, how the appraisal system presented them as knaves. Finally, based on the interview material, it is discussed how the tales of knights and knaves affected the efficiency of the appraisal system.
Promoting Peace, Freedom, and Prosperity: Talk of Knights
The Commission is traditionally described as the engine of Europe integration. At the same time, the organization has a clearly defined and extremely complex goal: promoting European integration and through this, peace, freedom, and prosperity in Europe (Rosamond, 2000, p. 51). The Commission itself states this in the following way: “Its job [the Commission] is to transform into practical everyday action these citizens’ aspirations for peace, freedom and prosperity.” 5
Employees of the Commission have been seen as identifying with these objectives and being motivated by them. On the positive side, Commission employees have been viewed as “working on a project that could outlaw war” (Dumoulin, 2007, p. 244); more negatively phrased, Connolly argued that “they [Commission staff] are missionaries, soldiers in the crusade for a European superstate.” (Connolly 1995, p. xiv). Either way, a strong emphasis is put on the altruistic aspects of motivation among Commission officials. The abstract talk of knights affects management tools in numerous ways. When taking a closer look at the organizational values proposed by the Commission, the talk of knightish behavior shines through (e.g., European Commission, 2006, 2007b, 2007c, 2008).
The 2006 statement of Commission values starts out by introducing what is practically an oath of allegiance to the traditional understanding of the role of the Commission:
By basing my behaviour and decisions on the highest ethical and professional standards, I am making a more effective contribution to the ambitious objectives of the Union. These objectives are defined in the Treaty and include amongst others the promotion of peace, prosperity, freedom and security, economic and social cohesion, solidarity among Member States, the preservation, protection and improvement of the quality of the environment and sustainable economic and social development. (European Commission, 2006, p. 2)
The statement is formulated in the first person singular, underlining the personal character of the values, and reflects the role of the Commission in promoting integration and peace, prosperity, and freedom, the core values also identified above.
Following the statement, a number of quite specific values are emphasized. The demand for internalization among employees goes further than just formulating the information folder on values in the first person singular. A very extensive degree of identification with values is expected. This is reflected when the Commission writes of staff as “ambassadors for the organization”: “all staff, in their life outside work, communicate an image of the Commission regardless of their function or grade” (European Commission, 2007b, p. 5).
Similarly, the following is stated regarding values in the Internal Control Standards 6 in the Commission: “2. Ethical and Organizational Values [emphasis in original]: Management and staff are aware of and share appropriate ethical and organizational values and uphold these through their own behavior and decision-making” (European Commission, 2007c, p. 16).
Finally, internalization is simply integrated into the 2008 value statement:
Staff communicate and behave in a way which will not reflect negatively on the Commission. Staff should in all contexts consider the possible consequences and implications of potential action; they should conduct themselves at all times with a due sense of proportion and propriety, always bearing in mind the image and the reputation of the Commission. (European Commission, 2008, p. 6)
Staff are expected to defend European integration, not only at work but “at all times”. They should always bear “in mind the image and the reputation of the Commission” and they are expected to “share” Commission values, which is something quite different from respecting or adhering to them when at work. Commission officials are generally expected to be strongly driven by the work it itself; a work that aims at ensuring peace, freedom, and prosperity for all Europeans.
Furthermore, the talk of knights affected the way appraisal was done until the revision of the appraisal system in 2000. According to several interviews and the Commissions own writings, appraisal did take place before the Kinnock reforms, but almost every employee was rated “excellent.” 7 All employees were per default expected to be highly motivated, by promoting peace, freedom, and prosperity. Due to this, promotion was primarily based on seniority.
Motivation by Points: Talk of Knaves
After the resignation of the Santer Commission in 1999 (see Cini, 2007 for an excellent overview), the Commission underwent a major reform program, known as the 2000 Kinnock reforms (European Commission, 2000a, 2000b). These included a new appraisal system, which held a conception of employees and their motivation, which was quite different from the value-driven entrepreneurs of integration that can be found in the value statements of the organization. Here, employees were talked about as knaves.
Career Development Reviews in the Commission
The Career Development Reviews (CDRs) 8 constitute an important part of a general focus on HR-development in the Kinnock reforms (European Commission, 2000a, p. 12). The system aimed at ending the tradition of promotion in the Commission being based on seniority. Seniority as a criterion for promotion and pay rise decoupled performance and rewards.
The CDRs introduced points that are given on a yearly basis by the closest manager to employees, with the number of points determining when individuals will be promoted. With this system, the CDRs aimed at linking actual performance and promotion strongly together. The points are combined with interviews with management and job descriptions to make it clearer for officials what they are supposed to do. In practice, the middle manager gives the employees a score of between 1 and 20 based on performance on three criteria: efficiency, ability, and aspects of conduct, after a self-evaluation. The score is then validated by the Director. 9 Furthermore, the Director General has a number of priority points that can be given to individuals, with each able to attain a maximum of 10 of these (Schön-Quinlivan, 2008, p. 734). On reaching a certain number of points, individuals will be promoted.
In comparison with the previous appraisal system, which was mainly used for rating all officials above average and promoting individuals based on seniority, this system also includes “punishing mechanisms” to prevent all employees from obtaining above average grades. Basically, if the score for a specific service, that is, department, does not lie within one point of the overall average of the Commission, the number of priority points the service is entitled to give to its employees will be reduced. 10 Consequently, the score obtained by individual employees are added up to generate the score of the service. This mechanism means that every service has to reach a specific target number of points, set so that the average employees get an average score. The distribution of points is a zero-sum game. To avoid everyone being evaluated as “excellent,” some have to get a below average score when someone gets an above average score.
Basically, the CDRs constituted talk of the employees of the Commission as knaves motivated by career progression and higher pay. The system was in numerous interviewees presented as the main tool for motivating Commission officials.
All talk and No Action: Talk of Knights and the Effect on Motivating Knaves
On paper the Commission aimed at using two strategies in motivating its employees. On one side, the employees where presented as knights, as the defenders of integration, promoting peace, freedom, and prosperity, and this higher purpose should follow them everywhere; on the other, they were knaves, motivated by career progression and following higher salaries. Even when NPM-inspired tools such as performance appraisal was introduced into the organization, central public values were strongly upheld, the worries in the literature was not confirmed at the level of talk. The interplay between talk of knights and knaves did however have an effect, when the implementation of the CDR’s is analyzed, here it becomes clear that implementation only happened rhetorically. We turn to this subject now.
Seniority Over Merit: Implementing CDRs
This part of the analysis builds on the interviews carried out. The way the system was implemented was described in similar terms across both time (2005-2010) and across different units and hierarchical levels among interviewees. The findings were furthermore corroborated by two recent surveys among Heads of Units and top managers in the Commission (Bauer, 2008; Ellinas & Suleiman, 2008), an in-depth case study of two DGs (Schön-Quinlivan, 2008) and a study based on in-depth interviews with staff in three DGs (Ban, 2008). The quotes below are to be seen as “exemplary” statements of points raised across numerous interviews. Of course, I cannot rule out that in some places in the Commission the CDRs were implemented according to the formal outline; this, however, cannot be said to be the general picture for the organization on the whole.
The Commission itself recognized that the implementation of the CDRs had been far from smooth:
aspects such as the use of merit points coupled with the average, the link between appraisal and promotions through priority points and the lack of transparency in the award of these points, the rising thresholds, as well as the cumbersome administrative procedures of the CDR, are a source of significant discontent. (European Commission, 2007d, p. 8)
My interview material outlines two different ways in which the CDRs were implemented. First, it was quite often pointed out that employees were being given average points to avoid punishing anyone. Due to the zero-sum character of the system, this was an easy way of evading the creation of conflict as well as avoiding “punishing” individuals for having highly performing coworkers. As the interviewee put it,
I think the CDR system, [. . .] it’s a good ambition, but it sort of boils down to a very strange implementation. You have this point system between 1-20, and you end up around 13, between 13-14 and you get 13.5. (DG AGRI, January 11, 2008)
Because the system was designed to avoid all individuals being evaluated as excellent, it was implemented so that everyone would be evaluated as average. The demand for differentiation between employees was not followed by actual differentiation in the evaluation process by the middle managers who had to implement the appraisal system. This pitfall for performance management is far from unique for the Commission (Harris, 2001).
Second, another uncontroversial way of using the incentives points is to use them to give employees who are close to promotion the last “push.” Promotion, understood in terms of a pay rise and rise in grade, comes about when a certain number of points have been obtained. This system conflates the incentives pay to a traditional Weberian system of promotions according to seniority. The interviewees explained it in the following way:
Especially in the beginning when the system was introduced, it was a pure disaster, because you had to end at an average, so you had to rank your employees [. . .] it worked in a way so you get something around the average, and then the ones you know have an opportunity for promotion, because they have been at that step in 3-4-5 years, and they are right on the verge, they get a bit more. So it doesn’t work as intended. I’ve tried the same thing, I was in [DG XX] one year, and I simply worked so hard [. . .] and still you get the average evaluation, because you are not yet “promorable,” you cannot get your promotion, that’s frustrating. (DG AGRI, January 16, 2008)
Basically, the system designed to ensure merit-based promotions was reverted into a system in which promotions were attained based on the length of tenure.
The two approaches are sometimes used together, giving everyone besides the ones ready for promotion an average number of points. Both mechanisms strongly detach performance from pay and evaluations. This causes, according to some employees, the incentives scheme to have the opposite effect of what was originally desired: it becomes demotivating. The highly bureaucratic process seems a complete waste of time, because in the end, promotions are not determined by the actual content of the analysis. While it seems in line with conventional managerial wisdom to carry out interviews with employees regarding their work, tasks, and development, the system as designed in the Commission causes employees to disregard this exercise. As one interviewee phrased it,
but if you see that when you do something more than what is normally foreseen or even much more than what is normally foreseen and you don’t find it in your evaluation afterwards in terms of points, then it’s demotivating. And you say: “this is not useful, why do I do this?” (DG AGRI, January 17, 2008)
We hence end up with scenario 2b, rhetoric implementation and crowding-out.
Once You’re in . . . . Balancing Knights and Knaves?
The introduction of the appraisal system did not result in more motivated staff. But why did the performance management system, carefully designed, end up as what was in place before—promotion according to seniority? While some of the explanation can be found in the design, primarily the fact that it was a zero-sum game, this was not the entire explanation. Basically, the appraisal system was not perceived as legitimate among Commission officials, as was reflected in numerous interviews. Two main explanations were provided: the employees did not trust the objectivity of the CDRs and the idea of performance appraisal, as such, was seen as illegitimate.
Just as Ellinas and Suleiman (Ellinas & Suleiman, 2008, p. 717) found in their survey, so did a large part of my interview material point to a basic lack of trust in the objectivity of the CDRs (see also Ban, 2008, p. 8). This lack of recognition of the objectivity of awarding points created pressure to deflate the system. As one interviewee put it, “I have already lived three, at least three, different forms of evaluation and reporting staff. But all I can say, it’s never objective, can’t be objective, it’s just not possible.” (DG AGRI, January 17, 2008).
Two major reasons for this lack of trust in the objectivity of the CDRs were outlined. First, an interviewee explained the distrust in the objectivity of the CDR with the lack of transparency inside the organization:
It’s difficult to show the rest of the world that you’re doing a great job. Because you have a strict, tight job description [. . .]. There’s not so much room for initiative, and someone would ask, why did she get so much, what did she do, that was so exceptional in relation to what others did. You don’t really see what others are doing. (DG AGRI, January 11, 2008)
The lack of knowledge inside the organization of who are the top performers causes distrust in the appraisal system. As Dahlström and Lapuente argue, the success of implementing performance pay systems depends on the extent to which employees trust that they will actually be rewarded according to their performance (Dahlstöm & Lapuente, 2010).
Second, the fact that Commission officials come from all EU countries causes nationality to be seen as important in relation to promotion:
with the Commission, [. . .] because of the fact we’re multicultural, we’re multilingual and we have so many different approaches to things, and there’s always a suspicion that whatever is done, is not fair [. . .] You see it at the moment with career progression, [. . .], someone who moves very fast in his career, is always viewed extremely suspiciously; either he knows somebody, or he’s got something on somebody, or it’s because the post was designed for him, the post he’s going to was designed for someone from a certain Member State [emphasis added]. And the fact that he could get there by his own hard work, and qualification and skill can be difficult to accept. (David Taylor, Union Representative, December 6, 2007)
The second explanation, which was predominant, was that the CDRs and the assumption that Commission officials were motivated by promotion and should be evaluated were seen as illegitimate. To enter the Commission individuals have to pass a very hard test, the Concours. 11 The fact that it is very difficult to obtain a job in the Commission leads to an expectation that when individuals have first entered the organization, they should be considered capable, simply because they have passed the Concours (Georgakakis, 2010). Their knightish motivation was basically perceived as ensured through recruitment. This perception was also underlined in Carolyn Ban’s study of the CDRs (Ban, 2008, p. 9). The hard core utilitarian approach was not seen as the “proper” way of motivating people; according to Ban, some find this approach almost offensive (Ban, 2008, p.6). Passing the Concours should be ample evidence of the commitment to and engagement with the European cause possessed by employees. In this sense, the CDRs questioned the altruistic motivation of employees. According to one interviewee, there was a cultural bias regarding who held this view:
[The appraisal system], was viewed as being non-threatening and not particularly a problem by a group of people who lived above a line drawn across the middle of Europe and was seen as [. . .] very bad by a group of people [. . .] who came from areas below the line, because to their way of thinking it was inappropriate to treat staff in that very direct, very clear way, and transparent. It was better to, you know, everyone is very good anyway, because we’ve all passed very high level competitions. (David Taylor, Union Representative, 6 December 2007)
The cultural differences within the Commission of course add an extra layer to the difficulties the organization faced when introducing extrinsic rewards. Had the organization been inhabited solely by Northern Europeans, perhaps the implementation of the system would have worked differently. 12
Conclusion: Having It Both Ways?
The article asked whether it was possible for the Commission to combine motivation based on its public character with performance appraisal. The answer was that exactly the strong talk of the special public nature of the Commission caused the performance management system to be perceived as illegitimate among employees. While this was not the entire explanation of the poor implementation of the CDRs, the talk of employees as both knights and knaves proved counterproductive when they were implemented. Implementation only happened rhetorically and the study does not indicate that motivation among Commission officials increased; crowding-in was not found. In relation to the fear of a crowding-out effect, the evidence is more interesting. The talk of knights continued even when the knavish mechanism was implemented. It however limited the efficiency of the knavish mechanism, a crowding-out mechanism, but working opposite as what is usually expected in the literature. We hence end with a situation that matches scenario 2b presented in Table 1. This study joins the chorus pointing to the difficulties of performance appraisal and adds that in organizations with a strong narrative of altruistic motivation this can be considered even harder. But as opposed to, for example, Frey (1997), the crowding mechanisms does not always work in favor of extrinsic rewards, here altruism undermined performance appraisal.
The Commission is of course a specific case because it was chosen due to an expectation of strong altruistic motivation on the rhetorical level. Not all public organizations have similar traits, but it is important to remember that, in general, the debate on public service motivation comes out of an expectation that public organizations have stronger altruistic motivation than private ones. Another reservation should be made as to the consequences for “real” motivation among employees. The study has not done a “before-and-after” measurement or complied any quantitative evidence in favor of a change in motivation. Future research into the changes in motivation in relation to organizational reform would be very interesting and would probably qualify the worries in relation to NPM.
Finally, the study raises interesting questions for practitioners facing reforms in public organizations. The claim popular in the literature that NPM can come sweeping in and succeed in changing public organizations was not supported in this study. On one hand, the study illustrates the difficulties facing mangers when they wish to reform. On the other, the fears that public values, or at least the importance of talking of them, might disappear over night seems unnecessary.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the following for their useful comments on earlier drafts: Mads Kristiansen, the participants in the seminar on public service motivation lead by Lotte Bøgh Andersen at Aarhus University, the participants in the workshop conveyed by Peter Nedergaard and Kennet Lynggaard at the 2009 conference of the Danish European Stuides Association, especially Christilla Roederer-Rynning, and the participants in the Seminar on “Governance and the European Commission” with Michelle Cini at the Center for European Politics, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen. Finally, the author would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.