Management by Objectives in the culture sector

Abstract

Background and problem description: During the eighties a change in the public sector took place. The demands of the public sector to become more efficient and cost containment increased. This reform was called New Public Management. This meant that market oriented ways to steer organisations was adopted in the public sector. One way to comply with these demands was to implement Management by Objectives. Management by Objectives has recently become a current topic within the municipalities once again. In 2004 the municipal law was changed which meant that the municipalities must identify goals for their activities. The goals also need to be measured and followed up. But, Management by Objectives in the public sector has been criticized because the public sector does not fulfil all the requirements needed for Management by Objectives. The culture activities are an important part of the public sector which also must be run efficiently. Although, the soft values that culture experiences offer to the citizens might make it even more difficult to identify goals and ways to measure the goals for these kinds of activities. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyse how four culture units have applied Management by Objectives and if potential problems exist with this way of steering. Method: The study has a qualitative approach. It is mainly descriptive, but also explorative since there are a limited number of studies made specifically in the area of culture. The primary data has been collected by interviewing respondents both from the political management in the studied municipalities and from the culture administrations. All of these respondents are involved in the steering process with which the culture administrations are controlled. Conclusions: All of the studied units use steering by objectives in some way. The main part has adopted the Balanced Scorecard, which is an extended version of Management by Objectives. All of them have identified goals for their specific activities but some of them have not identified specific measures for these goals. They also lack in their follow-up of the goals. The culture administrations experience problems with measuring quality and the way people benefit from culture. Employee participation has also been discussed as a problem in the public sector because the risk of the employees’ possibilities to get too much influence on political decisions. Other problems, not specifically connected to culture activities or the public sector, are to find a balance between general goals and goals that are to detailed and problems with internal communication.