Twentieth International Conference on Knowledge, Culture, and Change in Organizations

Abstract

Public sector managers frequently declare that implementing best practices as a set of standards may lead to superior organizational performance. Recent research, however, questions the objectification of best practices, highlighting: a) the inability of public sector organizations to develop innovative administrative practices, as well as b) the adoption of stereotypical renowned practices inculcated in the public sector by international governance bodies. The process through which organizations construe what a best practice is still remains a black box that is yet to be investigated. This study aims to describe and understand how organizational best practices are constructed by public sector performance management teams, like benchmarkers, during the benchmarking-mediated performance improvement process and what mechanisms enable this construction. A critical realist action research methodology is employed, starting from a description of various approaches on best practice nature when a benchmarking-mediated performance improvement initiative, is applied. Then we contextualized best administrative practices by reflecting the different perspectives emerged on the design and implementation of an interview protocol. We used this protocol to conduct thirty semi-structured interviews with “best practice” process owners, in order to examine their experiences and performance needs. Findings of this work include: a) a causal account of the nature of best administrative practices in the Greek public sector that shed light on explaining their management; b) a description of the various contexts affecting best practice conceptualization; and c) a description of how their interplay changed the organization’s best practice management.