A New Institutionalism Analysis of Performance Management Reform: Theoretical Outline and Evidence from Israel

This paper studies incremental institutional change. It integrates various rationales suggested in the literature and uses the resulting integration to explain managerial reforms in the public sector, specifically, performance management reforms. The analysis highlights the role of public officials as institutional entrepreneurs and provides tools for explaining their strategies for change. The empirical analysis explains the dynamics through which performance management reform has been carried out in Israel since 2006. It shows that an incremental strategy based on a layering mechanism may prove effective and stable when external barriers to change are weak, and internal barriers are strong. © 2013