寻找绩效管理的规范政治解释——兼论“从实践出发”与“理论指导实践”的统一

In Search of a Normative Political Account of Performance Management

公共行政研究一直面临着“从实践出发”与“理论指导实践”间的紧张。如果“从实践出发”意味着要“为实践所用”,实践考量就会挤压理论探索的独立空间,导致公共行政研究难以指导实践。要能指导实践,公共行政研究需要寻找“从实践出发”的其他方式。在当代组织管理中,绩效管理通常被实践者当成一种管理技术,其目的是提高组织运行的科学化水平,而当学术研究也以此为出发点时,就失去了为实践者提供反思性指导的能力。另一方面,绩效管理中的许多内容都表现出了很强的政治属性,使得我们也可以把绩效管理视为一种政治实践。通过这样一种“从实践出发”的方式,我们可以寻找绩效管理的规范政治解释,为组织管理和公共治理走出“规训与惩罚”的管理困境提供理论上的指引,也为旨在“指导实践”的公共行政研究寻找理论突破口。

Public administration research faces the tension between“starting from practice”and“theory guiding practice”. If“starting from practice”is understood as“being useful to practice”,it would be very hard for public administration research to guide practice. To be able to guide practice,public administration research needs to find other ways of“starting from practice”. Performance management is typically considered as a managerial technology to make the operation of organizations more scientifically. However,we can also find strong political character in many elements of performance management,and it may be reasonable to see performance management as some kind of political practice. This is another way of“starting from practice”, through this way,we can find a normative political account of performance management,which may provides some guidance for all organizations to get out of the dilemma of“discipline and punishment”,and may be illuminating for other researches intending to guide practice.