Evolution of Performance Measurement

Administration & Society
http://aas.sagepub.com Evolution of Performance Measurement Until 1930

Daniel W. Williams Administration & Society 2004; 36; 131 DOI: 10.1177/0095399704263473 The online version of this article can be found at: http://aas.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/36/2/131
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ADMINISTRATION Williams / EVOLUTION & SOCIETY OF PERFORMANCE / May 2004 MEASUREMENT

10.1177/0095399704263473
EVOLUTION OF PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT UNTIL 1930

DANIEL W. WILLIAMS Baruch College
Performance measurement originated at the early Bureau of Municipal Research. Over the next quarter century, it became more sophisticated through increased quantification and reliance on experts. However, its focus narrowed from government to government service. This narrowing is linked to reduced social activism among those who used these methods. The entire period saw combined interest in accomplishing results and containing costs. Leading advocates of measurement included Lent Upson, Clarence Ridley, Mabel Walker, and Edison Cramer. Ridley became the executive director of the International City Managers Association where he continued to promote performance measurement for the next 30 years.
Keywords: performance measurement; productivity; outcomes; program evaluation; scorecards; performance budgeting; governmental cost accounting; surveys; experts
As Henry Petroski has shown, even such humble objects as forks and paperclips evolve in response to practical environmental forces and the creativity of dissatisfied or merely imaginative users (Petroski, 1992). Is this true also of practices such as performance measurement? Who were the critical inventors, and how did they influence its development? What was added and what discarded? This article examines the development of performance measurement in the critical period from its origins through 1930. It examines the link to
AUTHORS NOTE: I would like to thank Romuald Litwin, Lynn Wang, Jeanette Ellis, Frederick Lane, Lynne Weikart, James Guyot, Ray Oman, Denise Wells, Hindy Lauer Schachter, participants in the Baruch faculty research seminar, participants at the 1999 regional conferences of the American Society for Public Administration and the American Political Science Association and at the delayed 2001 National Association for Budgeting and Financial Management conference, and the editors and reviewers for their comments, insight, and assistance. Errors are my own.
ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY, Vol. 36 No. 2, May 2004 131-165 DOI: 10.1177/0095399704263473 2004 Sage Publications
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ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / May 2004
forerunners including the social survey, cost accounting, and European collection of municipal statistics and codevelopments including scientific management and the U.S. collection of municipal statistics at the Census Bureau. The primary purpose of this article is to examine the development of performance measurement after its origin through these critical formative years. In 1910, performance measurement was embedded in a broader set of practices called municipal research. By 1930, performance measurement was a distinctive activity. In the interim, its focus narrowed from government to government service and its primary purpose shifted from political accountability to management effectiveness. The second section of the article describes the state of prototypical performance measurement in roughly 1910. In the third section, there is an extensive discussion exposing the particular practices as they occur over the ensuing 20 years. These developments are examined and explained in the fourth section. The fifth section is a brief conclusion. THE STATE OF PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN 1910 The first extended implementation of prototypical performance measurement practices arose at the New York Bureau of Municipal Research (NYBMR) after 1906 (D. Williams, 2002, 2003). Although there were numerous antecedents to these practices, three particulars stand out: the social survey of the settlement houses, prior developments in municipal statistics, and the then-recent advances of cost accounting. The NYBMRs research activities constitute prototypical performance measurement for two reasons. First, as with their modern descendents, they were focused on the efficiency and effectiveness of government. They focus on linking resources to intended governmental objectives (what is now called performance budgeting), results of governmental effort (outcomes), objectively chosen expectations (benchmarks), and fixing the organization to do better (productivity improvement). Second, the NYBMRs practices are, as explored in this article, the historical antecedents of current performance measurement practices. It is not uncommon for people to cite Clarence Ridley and Herbert Simons Measuring Municipal Activities (1938, 1943, 1948a) or their specifications for municipal reports (Ridley & Simon, 1948b) as the beginning of modern performance measurement (Bouckaert, 1992; Ehrenhalt, 1994). These publications descend from Ridleys 1927 dissertation, Means of
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Measuring Municipal Government (Ridley, 1927a) and the nearly identical Measuring Municipal Government (Ridley, 1927b), his teaching at University of Chicago, and his work at the International City Managers Association (Augier & March, 2001). In the forward to his dissertation, Ridley acknowledged the assistance of Lent Upson, the director of the Detroit Bureau of Governmental Research and a 1912 graduate of the Training School for Public Service, which was part of the NYBMR (Government Research Association, 1933; Ridley, 1927a). More than a fifth of Ridleys (1927a, 1927b) citations in Means of Measuring Municipal Government are linked to the NYBMR. And, most telling, the four categories Ridley (1927a, 1927b) explicitly treats in Means of Measuring Municipal Government were all similarly treated in 1912 by Henry Bruere (1912b), the original director of the NYBMR, in New City Government. D. Williams (2002) showed that the roots of the NYBMRs practices are primarily the survey, municipal statistics, and cost accounting. The survey. In the decades ending the 19th century, Jane Addams and Florence Kelley, leaders of the U.S. settlement house movement, imported Charles Booths social survey to discover facts about poverty (Converse, 1987; Sklar, 1991). The social survey was a method to gather detailed data about small areas. Data analysis used qualitative devices such as coded maps to reveal demographic information. Booths surveys of London are generally treated as the paradigm shift that prepared the way for modern social research. Henry Bruere, the original director of the NYBMR, was directly associated with the settlement houses. William H. Allen and Frederick A. Cleveland, his two codirectors after a 1907 reorganization, were indirectly associated with the settlement houses through their involvement with the Association for the Improving the Condition of the Poor (AICP) (Dahlberg, 1966; Kahn, 1997). Municipal statistics. Collection and analysis of statistics originated in the 1660s as the study of state facts (Porter, 1986). These practices were merged with the study of probability in the 1800s and became a general science of inductive method about 1900 (Porter, 1986; Stigler, 1986). The collection of quantitative social facts flourished during the late 1800s. It is in this context that the collection of municipal statistics developed in Europe. John Fairlie (1899, 1901, 1908), a prominent U.S. political scientist, communicated these European developments to the American audience. In this early period, governmental, demographic, and commercial data were mixed together; the same report might contain information about government expenditures, births, and tonnage at the local port. By 1900,
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the governmental data sometimes looked like precursors of performance measurement, showing expenditures for various specific activities of government normalized by population.1 In the United States, national sponsorship for collecting municipal statistics began in earnest in 1898 at the Department of Labor and was transferred to the newly formed Census Bureau in 1902 (Fox, 1977; Hanger, 1901; Meyer, 1910). Cost accounting. Modern cost accounting spread in the United States following Captain Henry Metcalfes 1885 text, Cost of Manufactures (Garner, 1954; Previts & Merino, 1979). Cost accounting associates costs with those factors that lead to them and with the ultimate uses to which they contribute. Partly to achieve cost accounting objectives, Frederick Clow (1896) adopted Adolf Wagners functional model of government for budget and accounting categories (Fox, 1977). The National Municipal League (NML) promoted uniform accounting based on Clows functionalism (Fox, 1977; Hartwell, 1901). Then NML influenced the early Census Bureau to promote uniform municipal accounting across the country. The Census Bureau also tried to associate financial statistics (costs) with data on service provision, which it called physical statistics, but achieved little success (Cummings, 1913; Fox, 1977; Meyer, 1910; Willoughby, 1910). The NYBMR combined these antecedents and codevelopments to empirically investigate government. It sought to promote a competent and hierarchical executive branch of government, retain a decision-making role for the legislature, and assist the public to better participate in democracy. The NYBMR also sought to expand governmental capacity while slowing the growth of, or even shrinking, taxation. Prototypical performance measurement practices uniquely produce an opportunity to meet these many objectives (D. Williams, 2002, 2003). Early performance measurement practices included three sorts of measurements. First, the NYBMR sought to reform budgeting and accounting practices so that costs could be clearly associated with specific activities of government. This effort was an implementation of the NMLs agenda. Second, the NYBMR sought to develop specific real-time records of work performance so that activity and output could be clearly associated with costs. This effort was an extension of the NML and Census Bureaus efforts and was influenced by scientific management after 1910. Third, the NYBMR measured social conditions, sometimes focused on needs assessment and sometimes on outcomes. This measurement was an extension of the settlement house practices (D. Williams, 2003).
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Early performance measurement practices fulfilled two objectives. First, they communicated information to managers to show the nature and status of work completed and contributed to improved work productivity. Second, they supported budgetary decision making by revealing information about needs and program effectiveness (D. Williams, 2003). An adequate account of the initial performance measurement practices requires a brief comment on the political context. Under the Federalist governments of George Washington and John Adams, the United States adopted a strong executive model of government following the advice of Alexander Hamilton. The administration responded to the president. The role of the legislature was to express the will of the people. Beginning with the election of Thomas Jefferson, there was a gradual erosion of presidential power in favor of Congress, which came to dominate the administration (White, 1948, 1951, 1954, 1958). By the late 1800s, Jeffersonian government was widespread throughout the United States (White, 1954, 1958). However, shortcomings in legislative control of local government were apparent. Patronage, logrolling, and corrupt granting of franchises were a few of these shortcomings (Maxey, 1919; White, 1958; D. Williams, 2002). Advocates of a return to Hamiltonian practices were gaining strength. However, the fear of dictatorial power and a loss of responsiveness to the public retarded this return to Hamiltonian principles. It is in this context that municipal research and prototypical performance measurement took root. Performance measurement-like practices were promoted as an improvement in efficiency and in transparency. Transparency was the vehicle to overcome resistance to executive government. Through budgeting, cost accounting, surveys, and reporting, the executive would be held accountable to the legislature and the public (D. Williams, 2002). OVERVIEW OF DEVELOPMENT UNTIL 1930 In 1906, William H. Allen influenced R. Fulton Cutting to fund the Bureau of City Betterment as a function of the Citizens Union (Dahlberg, 1966). Henry Bruere, a colleague of Allens at the AICP, was hired as the director. Because of a spectacular study that led to the removal of Manhattan Borough President John F. Ahearn, the bureau received considerable attention. After a year, Cutting influenced other major donors, such
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as John D. Rockefeller, to commit enough funds to create the Bureau of Municipal Research (as it was originally known). Allen and Frederick Cleveland joined Bruere as secretary, technical director, and director, respectivelybut effectively, three codirectorsof the NYBMR. A large part of the NYBMRs early activities consisted of providing technical assistance to New York City for accounting reform, essentially to implement the NMLs functional budget as a form of cost accounting (Bureau of Municipal Research, 1907, 1916; Gulick, 1928). Cleveland had served on the NML committee that recommended uniform municipal accounting (Hartwell, 1901). This accounting work also led in the direction of work improvement programs, which began to reflect the influence of scientific management about 1910. By adopting the NMLs functional accounting practices, a government implicitly committed itself to improving its use of resources to achieve its ends, that is, it adopted the intent to improve its work practices. However, early work improvement programs focused on scheduling work so that it could be verified (Bruere, 1912b; Pultz, 1912; Taussig, 1912; Welton, 1912). More sophisticated work improvement programs are found after Louis Brandeis popularized scientific management from 1910 to 1911 (Cooke, 1913, 1915; Interstate Commerce Commission, 1911; Haber, 1964; Hammond, 1911; D. Williams, 2002, 2003). Possibly because of the Ahearn incident or because of encroachment on corruption and patronage, the NYBMR quickly earned the enmity of Tammany Hall,2 which engaged in a smear campaign about the Bureau of Municipal Besmirch. According to NYBMRs literature, this smear campaign not only backfired in New York, but it also led to its extensive outreach activities conducting surveys and setting up research bureaus across the country (Bureau of Municipal Research, 1916; Gulick, 1928). The application of the survey to governments or communities was effectively an audit of the government. This audit uncovered empirical evidence of the governmental performance. The first city to receive these services was Philadelphia, the hometown of the NML. By 1916, there were 15 bureaus of municipal research and, in 1928, there were 74 (Bureau of Municipal Research, 1916; Gulick, 1928). Research bureaus continued to proliferate through the beginning of World War II (Gill, 1944). In 1912, the work of the NYBMR and the other bureaus it spawned were highlighted in the May 12 edition of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. At about this time, governmental surveys had been conducted in Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago (Bureau of Municipal Research, 1916; Gulick, 1928; Woodruff, 1910).3
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The Chicago study was known as the Merriam Commission after Charles Merriam, a Chicago alderman and future giant of American political science. By this point, municipal research had become an established method for interested civic leaders to monitor government performance. The bureaus continued to use surveys to study government and to examine social issues into the 1920s.4 By the 1920s, cost accounting was much more sophisticated. This can be seen in the work of A. E. Buck and William Watson (Buck, 1924; Buck & Watson, 1926). The use of the survey also continued to expand. Charles Beard (1923), who was the director of the Training School at the NYBMR from 1915 to 1918 and director of the Bureau from 1918 to 1921, used the survey method to assist with reconstruction after the Great Tokyo Earthquake of 1923. Lent Upson (1924b) used the survey as a method to improve many local governments. The study of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, edited by Upson, is effectively a textbook in public administration. Soon, he wrote such a textbook (Upson, 1926). William B. Munro (1926) wrote an alternative text that recorded 25 criteria for government. This cumulating body of work led to the 1927 publication of Clarence Ridleys Measuring Municipal Government, (Ridley, 1927a; Ridley, 1927b), a landmark text in the development of performance measurement. It led to further work by Ridley and others at the International City Managers Association where Ridley was executive director from 1928 through 1956 (Ridley & Nolting, 1933, 1934; Ridley & Simon, 1938, 1948a). Ridleys early work was soon followed by Mabel Walkers 1929 attempt to develop an index of quality of life in cities of 30,000 population or greater (M. Walker, 1929, 1930).5 Ridley and M. Walkers texts were academic documents. At about the same time, Edison Cramer (1929) completed A Survey of the General Civic Conditions of Colorado Cities Having a Population of 2,000 or More for the Colorado Municipal League, reflecting the growing adoption by practitioners. FORMS AND DEVELOPMENT OF MEASUREMENT PRACTICES The developing measurement practices can be classified into several broad categories: research into government management, conduct of the survey, development of the scorecard, and deepening reliance on subject matter specialists for development of measures and standards.
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RESEARCH INTO GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT
The bureaus of municipal research engaged in several forms of research into government practices. First, as early as 1907, the NYBMR helped New York City develop and implement a functional budget and accounting system. Functional categories replaced lump-sum appropriations and served to relate funding to the particular work units; thus, it was a form of cost accounting. This program was designed to show where money was being spent (functional accounting) and where there was public need (budgeting). It was used with success to argue for increased appropriations for the New York City Department of Health in 1907 (Bureau of Municipal Research, 1907, 1916; D. Williams, 2003). However, by the early 1910s, the functional budget had become line-item budgeting and blocked administrative discretion all too well (Dahlberg, 1966). At the same time, the NYBMR had essentially infiltrated the executive branch in New York City, so it no longer particularly distrusted government officials. It began to support appropriation in broader categories while retaining narrow categories for accounting and budget preparation (Dahlberg, 1966; Gulick, 1928). This refocusing amounted to a support for executive budgeting where legislative control was dependent on expressed, but not enacted, plans. Both the earlier functional budget and the later executive budget contributed to the development of performance measurement practices. The functional budget was conceived as a form of cost accounting where both planned and actual costs could be compared with each other and with past years; other communities, services, and products; and results. Thus conceived, the functional budget was a device to convince decision makers to allocate funds to specific needs (Bureau of Municipal Research, 1907). Functional accounting was used to verify that funds were used for these purposes and to show whether results were achieved. When the NYBMR later began to advocate relaxed appropriation categories, the role of reporting became more important. Executive budgeting left the appropriating authority with weaker control over actual expenditures and thus more dependent on accounting and reporting to know whether funds were used as planned. The legislatures power was found in the ability to accept or reject the next budget (Goodnow, 1912). The support of the executive budget was not entirely consistent with the NYBMRs original objectives, because this newer system began to close the door on public knowledge of governmental activities. There was a heated controversy when Maryland adopted an executive budget system in 1916 (Allen, 1917; Chase, 1917; Schachter, 1997). Allen, who was no
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longer associated with the NYBMR, opposed this system, which had been designed by NML experts including his former colleague, Cleveland. Allen objected to the Maryland law because it set only limited requirements for public, or even legislative, input. To some degree, this debate was a proxy battle over the then pending and soon to be enacted Budget and Accounting Act of 1921. The executive budgeteers won on all fronts. The second category of research into government management focused on personnel. In the earliest period of the NYBMR, this interest centered on getting a full days work out of government employees (Bruere, 1912a; Pultz, 1912; Welton, 1912). It was thought that some employees, such as water inspectors or public works employees, put in very little actual work. To get the work done, the NYBMR recommended a system of work planning, scheduling, reporting, and inspection. The NYBMR also advocated the improvement of employee efficiency ratings with interest in more detailed and real-time work records rather than retrospective assessments. Originally, the objective was to validate claimed work activities. After 1910, these practices became more sophisticated under the influence of scientific management. During the decade of the 1910s, the NYBMR became interested in standardization of work processes in two senses. First, there was the core scientific management interest in defining the best way to do each type of job. Secondly, there was an interest in setting time and resources standards for work. This second sense was carried over from the NMLs uniform accounting objectives. Standardization was also carried into financial management with a particular focus on purchasing (Agnew, 1924; Barnum, 1924; Bruere, 1915; Burks, 1912; Connell, 1912; Cooke, 1918; Dunaway, 1916; Klein, 1912; Scott, 1924). Standardization cannot be completely distinguished from the scorecard practices discussed below. Scores were used to gauge how well standards were met. Standardization is one of the main practices that the research bureaus borrowed from scientific management.6 Morris Cooke (1924), the most direct transplant from the scientific management community to public administration, invoked Frederick Taylors name to assert that the NYBMRs budget system was an obstacle that must be gotten around. He also criticized the NMLs accounting practices (Cooke, 1915). Most significantly, Taylor and Cooke advocated distributed management; Taylor derogatorily referred to hierarchy as military management, which he considered a principal obstacle to efficiency (Cooke, 1910, 1915; Taylor, 1947/1903). The NYBMR and its legacy, particularly in the work of Luther Gulick (1981), explicitly rejected Taylors distributed manage-
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ment.7 As a consequence, the scientific management that took root in public administration was rather mutated, borrowing more from the technical developments of standardization and cost accounting than the whole scientific management program.
SURVEYS
The bureaus of municipal research conducted many surveys.8 These can be classified into three categories. First, the bureaus conducted studies of the entire community environment. These comprehensive studies were considered the first step in helping a community to establish its own research bureau (Bureau of Municipal Research, 1916; Gulick, 1928). They included a study of government power and structure, industry, social conditions, health, charity, and the physical environment (Bruere, 1912b; Bureau of Municipal Research, 1916). The survey collected data through firsthand observation, review of any available statistical data, review of laws and government reports, and interviews with government officials and selected citizens.9 The purpose was to gather a comprehensive description of the community to learn what conditions required improvement and what did not. One study of 10 cities that had adopted the commission form of government10 was conducted to compare this governmental form with the practices advocated by the NYBMR (Bruere, 1912b). This comprehensive survey was adopted by socially active groups who began to promote their own citizen surveys (Aronovici, 1910, 1916; Wisconsin Conference of Social Work, 1927).11 The citizen survey of 1920 was not a survey of the citizens by the government or its proxy; it was a survey of the government or the entire community by the citizens. Second, the bureaus engaged in special-topic studies focusing on such matters as housing conditions, health, poverty, schools, recreation, or any other social matter that was thought to require analysis (Mark, 1916; Treleven, 1912). These studies are the bureaus most direct continuation of the settlement house social survey. The function of the bureaus special topic studies was to highlight social problems that needed addressing through public policy. These surveys got the facts before the public in a manner that made ignoring problems difficult. For example, surveys that demonstrated an exposure to the risk of typhoid and death (as with a 1916 survey of Portsmouth, Ohio), when the technology to avoid it was well known, seemed obviously to demand implementation of the technology (Mark, 1916).
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The third form of survey was the government study (Beard, 1923; Bureau of Municipal Research, 1916; Gulick, 1928; Upson, 1924b).12 This sort of survey was similar to the special topics studies with two exceptions. First, government surveys did not focus on social issues or social problems; they examined government conditions. Second, the bureaus engaged in a considerable number of these surveys and developed them to a greater degree than other surveys. This sort of survey could be considered a program audit of the entire local government. It examined matters of governance such as the laws and powers of the government; the means of public participation and citizen access to government; and the financial condition, budgeting, accounting, purchasing, and other elements of financial management, personnel management, and the functions of government agencies. It also addressed the delivery of services such as police, fire, health, and public works (Bruere, 1912b). It included function-by-function recommendations for modernization of the government. These surveys were expected to uncover objective facts, but they were not necessarily neutral. Brueres New City Government (1912b) was undisguised in its preference for strong executive models of government in opposition to legislator-administrators. The objective facts were thought to demonstrate the reasonableness of this preference. Two studies worth note are the study of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio, led by Upson (1924b) of the Detroit Bureau of Municipal Research and the study of Tokyo conducted by Beard (1923), who had been the director of the NYBMR Training School and the NYBMR. These studies, conducted in the early 1920s, reflect both the government research discussed in the previous section and the application of survey methods of this section. They examined both the delivery of government services and the conduct of government itself.
THE SCORECARD/INDEX
The survey developed into the scorecard by the end of 1910s and was becoming the index at the end of the next decade (A Score Card for West Virginia Cases, 1923; Ayres, 1920; Federal Council of Citizenship Training, 1924; How One City Scored Itself, 1923; Hudson, 1926; Measuring Government Efficiency, 1924; Ogburn, 1917; M. Walker, 1930). However, the scorecard is also linked to the use of standards. The scorecard used a point system to standardize results of the survey (Bruere, 1912b; Commons, 1908; Richards, 1915). It provided the opportunity to
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compare various communities on a single index (Ayres, 1920; Bracy, 1924; Cramer, 1929; Deacon, 1926; Hudson, 1926; Ogburn, 1917; Palmer et al., 1925; Schneider, 1916; M. Walker, 1929; H. Williams, 1927). Point values were assigned to each survey element reflecting how well an object of observation met a standard. The standard could be either technical or normative. The point total represented the quality of community life or the quality of some particular aspect of community life. Thus, communities could be objectively compared, and local residents could know how their city compared with the country. However, there were many scorecard schemes developed over the 2 decades of the 1910s and 1920s, which confounded the comparative objective.13 Two technical difficulties with the scorecard were with the methods of assigning points and of assigning relative values to each item. For the earlier problem, some scorecards gave instructions for some or all items (Strayer, Engelhardt, & Elsbree, 1927), whereas others simply listed the maximum available points beside a question or topic (A Score Card for West Virginia Cities, 1923; Wisconsin Conference of Social Work, 1927). The points themselves reflected degrees of approximation to a desired level. Relative values might be set as equal, set based on the judgment of authors, or left to the user to decide (Commons, 1908; Cramer, 1929; Deacon, 1926; Ogburn, 1917; Palmer, 1926). In 1924 and 1925, American Political Science Association (APSA) round tables recommended continued research in various aspects of relative values (Cottrell, 1925; Upson, 1924a). For this period, the only identifiable research-based estimate of relative values is with a proposed health department scorecard that set weights for health work based on damage to be overcome by health services (Schneider, 1916). The scorecard was not necessarily a primary data collection instrument; it could be used to collect elements of secondary data into one place (Ogburn, 1917; M. Walker, 1929). The scorecard was borrowed from earlier use in agriculture on at least three occasions. In 1908, John Commons borrowed a scorecard from standardizing and grading agriculture products, such as wheat, corn, oats, butter, cheese, horses, cows, pigs, and so on (p. 126). He used the scorecard to normalize housing characteristics, so his approach is an ancestor to the broader-than-economics use of indexes.14 In 1907, the NYBMR replicated a copy of a scorecard used for dairy inspection in its account of its work at the New York City Department of Health (Bureau of Municipal Research, 1907). A few years latter, Bruere (1912b) used a
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scorecard approach in rating 10 commission governments apparently having adopted it from his own prior experience at the NYBMR. However, he used the term scorecard in quotes (Bruere, 1912b, p. 21), possibly reflecting an awareness of Commonss work. In 1915, E. G. Richards borrowed the scorecard from dairy inspection to aid in fire insurance rating of cities. By and during the 1920s, the scorecard became a robust instrument. It was used by professional and community groups to rate communities and governments, it was used by experts as a basis for measuring government performance, and it was used by specialists to measure the performance of particular government activities such as the services of the health department (Ayres, 1920; Federal Council of Citizenship Training, 1924; Palmer, 1926; Strayer et al., 1927; H. Williams, 1927; Wisconsin Conference of Social Work, 1927). William Ogburn (1917), Mabel Walker (1929, 1930), Edison Cramer (1929), and others transformed the scorecard into an index. Ogburns 1917 survey of 36 major U.S. cities uses secondary data to compute an index that aggregates scores on 17 criteria: wage rate, cost of living, death rate, infant mortality rate, population married, church membership, child labor, parks, pavement, fire loss, public properties, circulation of library books, school attendance, school property, teachers salaries, number of pupils to a teacher, illiteracy, and the number of foreign-born persons unable to speak English.15 These criteria are most similar to those of Allen and Bruere, who also focused on community matters, rather than Beard and Upson, who focused solely on government, or Ridley and M. Walker, who focused solely on government service. M. Walker (1929, 1930) used municipal data from various reports and almanacs to develop a grade for 160 cities with a population of 30,000 or more. M. Walker emphasizes the word results, which she uses to distinguish her rating from measures of government process or activity. Cramers (1929) index for Colorado cities is based on the data collected from the cities themselves through either personal visits or responses to questionnaires. The data comprise a mixture of performance data, such as that M. Walker emphasized, and cost-per-capita data for fiscal year 1928. Component scores in seven categories are separately ranked for cost and accomplishment. Ranks are added across service categories to a final score.16 This study followed a study of 1923 expenditures by William Bracy (1924) that also contained both cost and service data. Bracys study does not reveal enough information to show exactly how these two types
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of data were combined, in part, because the sources of cost are not, as with Cramers study, directly associated with services. So, Cramers index is concerned with both productivity in the narrow sense and with outcomes. SPECIALIZATION AND SPECIALISTS In 1907, Allen was equally at home with hospital, charity, or school efficiency. He discussed criminology and even efficiency of religion. In 1912, Bruere (1912b) discussed health, crime, fire, public works, accounting, budgeting, purchasing, and citizen participation. Ogburns 1917 study addressed 17 categories of service. Upsons (1924b) report on Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio, also reflects extensive breadth. In 1927, Ridley (1927a, 1927b) narrowed the discussion to four services: fire protection, health, police, and public works. He provided only brief guidance for measuring other functions. Ridleys work became the foundation for future development, so this narrowing is significant. One characteristic that distinguishes fire protection, health services, and police work from the broad range of matters discussed by Allen or Upson is that measurement of these services and their outcomes had long been the study of subject matter experts. As early as 1912, Henry Bruere (1912b, p. 298 ff) cited the work of the National Board of Fire Underwriters, which kept track of fire loss. After 1915, the underwriters used a scorecard approach to rate cities on risk of fire loss based on a combination of fire fighting capacity and environmental conditions (Richards, 1915; H. Walker, 1926a, 1926b, 1926c, 1926d). Fire loss was a clear measure of results, one of the few that were available at that time. Although Ridley (1927b, pp. 13-22) recommended a change in the unit of measure for fire loss, he accepted much of the fire underwriters program. Measurement of health services was the beneficiary of even more expert study. From the start of the municipal research movement, infant mortality was viewed as the most important indicator of local conditions (Allen, 1907, p. 72; Bruere, 1912b, p. 27). Throughout the ensuing 20 years, studies frequently return to measuring health status, particularly of children. Although various social surveys were in use, a frequent topic was health, which often meant health of children. Innovators in measuring community health included the American Public Health Association, the American Child Health Association, and the federal government. Typically, they developed a scorecard-style rating system (Committee on Administrative Practice, 1926; Palmer et al., 1925; U.S. Public Health Ser-
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vice, 1926). The scorecards were used to judge health departments or health services as much as health outcomes. For example, the American Child Health Association study examined service capacity or delivery issues such as the number of nursing visits per 1,000 infants along with, of course, infant mortality (Palmer et al., 1925, pp. 136-137). Other matters such as enforcement of laws were sometimes addressed (Committee on Administrative Practice, 1926, p. 55). However, at no point throughout this period did these professionals lose track of infant mortality. Ridley (1927b, p. 30) devoted a considerable portion of his text to discussing the validity of these measures, which he concluded to be reasonably valid. Police work had also received some prior expert attention. However, it had not reached the same level of sophistication as fire protection or health services. Ridley (1927b, p. 31) considered the objective of police work to be preventing crime, not solving crime (convictions), as it had been 20 years earlier (Bruere, 1912b, p. 279). Ridley remained concerned with arrests and convictions but was also interested in the reporting of crimes (complaints) as a measure of crime prevention. Although Ridley knew that some communities kept crime statistics, there was no method of comparing them (Quigley, 1925; Ridley, 1927b). As he said, No real standard of measurement for police work now exists (Ridley, 1927b, p. 31). In 1924, Hugh Lester recommended uniform crime classifications. In 1930, the International Association of Chiefs of Police began collecting uniform national crime data. Their work was associated with the bureaus of municipal research through the service of Lent Upson (Committee on Uniform Crime Records of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, 1930; Smith, 1929). As with health and fire protection, the measurement of crime prevention and detection was dominated by experts; however, the measurement itself was not as advanced. Although fire, health, and police services were the object of expert study, measurement of public works had hardly begun (Ridley, 1927b, pp. 39-46). Ridley (1927b) argued that public works cannot be measured in aggregate impact on the community but must be measured separately for each service. He discussed streets, snow removal, street cleaning, street lighting, sewers, refuse disposal, and water supply. For each of these, he looked to measures in the form of area or quantity supplied or moved. Emphasis is on getting an exact unit that can be compared across communities. For all of these areas, he characterized his recommendations as suggestions, reflecting a lack of more than incidental use by governments.
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I will discuss two specific sets of Ridleys suggestions, those for street cleaning and sewage. For street cleaning, Ridley (1927b) went to some degree to be specific about area and raised additional issues such as grade of street; type of pavement; character and amount of traffic; whether cleaning is done by day or by night; quality and character of the refuse; paved or unpaved intersecting streets; and, lastly, the standard of cleanliness (p. 42). These standards reflect little advance and, in some ways, a decline from the work of the Census Bureau as reported by Meyer in 1910 where specifics of refuse are not so clearly addressed but additional consideration is given to frequency of cleaning. For sewage, Ridley (1927b, p. 43) discussed factors contributing to the cost of system construction and maintenance. Nowhere did he ask what the purpose of a sewage system might be. This stands in stark contrast to the view offered by Walter Wilcox in 1896: Hence the benefit of a sewerage system should be measured in terms of decreased mortality rather than in terms of increased productivity (p. 378). In summary, public works measurement was no more developed in 1927 than in 1910 and had perhaps somewhat regressed. The bulk of Ridleys text discusses these four areas.17 With the first three, subject matter specialists (fire insurance companies, public health workers, and emergent criminologists) took charge and developed measurement techniques. Health and fire protection had seen considerable advances, whereas police work was under study. The measurement of public works reflects little advance over the earliest studies. Mabel Walker (1930) similarly narrowed her discussion to three principal categories: public works, protective service, and welfare. She included five measures for each of the first two categories and six for the third. Her public works measures focused on street cleaning, garbage collection, sewerage, and paved highways and were volume measures similar to Ridleys, although she was interested in the proportion of the population served with sewage systems. Her protective services included Ridleys other three categoriespolice, fire, and health. She was unable to obtain any useful data on police. Her measure of fire protection was loss. She measured health services through death rate, communicable disease rate, and infant mortality rate. Her welfare categories were schools (primarily), libraries, and parks. These services were measured in terms of volume of services provided including the number of books circulated, the area of park land per capita, and, for schools, the proportion of the population served. Although her categories are somewhat broader than Ridleys, they are still considerably narrower than Upsons or Allens. Her three additional objects of measurement also benefited from expert atten-
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tion (Ayres, 1920; Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1928; Emmons, 1926; Gulick, 1929; Hansen & Wheeler, 1927; Martin, Davis, & Keppel, 1926; Strayer et al., 1927). Six of Cramers seven categories match M. Walkers (Cramer, 1929; M. Walker, 1930). His additional category is water works, a municipal enterprise. In the earlier study, William Bracy (1924) used essentially the same categories as Cramer. Cramers study also includes discussion of other matters such as elections, tax rates, and debt, but these factors are not tabulated in the rankings. Cramers study differs from Ridleys methods or M. Walkers index in that the objects of study originated with Bracy in 1924. This earlier origin can be seen in the collection of election data, which reflect the examination of citizens rather than government services. However, these citizen data are not included in Cramers final index.18 It is not possible to tell from Bracys report whether he included citizen data in his index. Although Cramers reasons for including categories may differ from M. Walkers or Ridleys, the practical effect is the same: Fire loss, infant mortality, acres of parks per capita, and volumes of books circulated per capita were, by the late 1920s, the object of expert measurement. Thus, by the late 1920s, performance measurement had come to reflect observation by experts. Overall, government was no longer a frequent object of examination. Performance measurement was used to examine how government services were delivered to the public, primarily by focusing on the volume or consequences of services. And the survey had evolved to the scorecard and then the index. CHANGES AND CONTINUATION How did performance measurement change between the early work by the NYBMR and the end of the 1920s? What remained unchanged?
SOPHISTICATION
There was increased sophistication of methods in some areas, particularly health and fire protection. Police work measurement had begun to become sophisticated. Other areas of study such as education, libraries, and parks were developing specialized technical performance measurement, but development was uneven. Some types of activity, such as public works, had seen little change over these 2 decades.
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Another technique that saw more sophistication was cost accounting. At the beginning of this period, cost accounting was addressed through functional budgeting and accounting and the calculation of work unit costs. In 1926, A. E. Buck and William Watson rejected functional accounting as cost accounting and instead worked with cost centers. Although cost centers can be organizational units, they did not have to be. Buck and Watson (1926) defined three sorts of cost units: production units where there is a tangible output of an activity; work units where there is no tangible outputthey give the example of student-hours of instruction; and service units where there is a mixture of tangible and nontangible output. They discussed such matters as indirect costs, overhead allocation, and consideration of controllable and uncontrollable costs. In summary, they had adopted standard industrial cost accounting. Buck and Watson (1926) were clear that cost accounting is a cost-of-production concept and is used to determine whether the production cost is extraordinary. Such answers, they said, do not show whether the end user gets ultimate value out of the service; for example, cost accounting can say how many days of care a patient received and the cost of delivering but not whether the patient is left better off. Buck (1924) was not uninterested in results in government but held that results are simply not what cost accounting studies. Buck and Watson proposed standard costs to which an administrator can compare actual costs to gauge whether they are reasonable. Unlike early innovators (Bachman, 1912), they expressed no interest in the possibility that costs are too low.
QUANTIFICATION
The sophistication of cost accounting reflects a general movement toward quantification. The use of scorecards also reflects this quantification. With a scorecard, communities can be compared with a single number. The scorecards also became more sophisticated, as with the more sophisticated weighting of points near the end of this period. Another example of quantification is a study directed by Upson (1924b) concerning the governments of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio. This study quantifies something in nearly every section such as the proportionate disposition of cases by judges (Upson, 1924b, p. 229), the comparative number of crimes in various localities (p. 241), fire loss (p. 265), mileage by pavement type (p. 293), relative efficiency of street cleaning (pp. 317-322), average load of a garbage trip (p. 328), relative cost of cleaning the court house (p. 337), death rates (p. 352), and relative
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access to parks (p. 292). Where quantification is not possible because of lack of data, as with the comparative efficiency of building inspection with transportation by foot or by automobile, there is an effort to estimate (Upson, 1924b, p. 274), and Upson later carried out this measurement (Upson, 1926). Quantification was not universal; Charles Beards The Administration and Politics of Tokyo (1923) contains very little quantitative data. However, even it contains many recommendations for Tokyo to implement quantitative measurement. For Upson (1926), what was not yet measured would be in the future: It may not be long until bookkeepers, clerks, and stenographers will be required to measure and report on a standard days work (p. 148). In later times, there were efforts to implement these very measures (Bills & Dickenson, 1937; Curtis, 1937; Rosenberg, 1948). This effort was not always appreciated, as William D. Carey (1946) put it, Occasionally, some rear-echelon genius with a slide rule will devise units of weighted measurement for each individual type of action, requiring the poor wretch in the field office to convert his telephone calls and paper actions into points and decimals (p. 24) With scorecards, quantification brought problems to overcome. First, scoring required assigning of scores to the component elements. As the modern survey researcher might observe, this is tricky business. The score is not an unprocessed observation, which itself requires some care to capture reliably. It is, instead, a judgment, which is very difficult to make objective at all. As time progressed, efforts were made to guide the observation and scoring. In Mabel Walkers work, where scoring has become constituent to indexing, the scoring is made the rigid consequences of formulas. However, she discussed the character of her own problems working out these formulas and reflected the need for continued input of analyst judgment (M. Walker, 1930, p. 67).19 In effect, she declared that some levels of achievement are unrealistically demanding. The second problem is one of assigning weights. To combine scores from various observations, one must assign weights to each constituent element. In 1912, Bruere (1912b) assigned equal weights to the elements of his study. In 1908, Commons dismissed the problem of weights as something that any researcher could settle to his own satisfaction. The fire underwriters assigned their weights based on relative contribution to fire risk (Richards, 1915). In the 1920s, one health services scorecard assigned weights based on relative damage to be overcome through various services (Schneider, 1916). In 1924, the American Political Science Association convened panels and committees focused on addressing the
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problem of setting weights for scorecards (Upson, 1924a). In her 1929 study, M. Walker (1930) assigned weights to provide roughly equal balance to her three major categories of government service. Cramer (1929) weighed seven categories of service equally and two categories of measure equally. Weighting was important and not easily solved.20 Here we come face to face with the growing belief that science is value neutral. This view holds that science studies facts that include no normative component. The academic side of public administration began to adopt this view. Meanwhile, by the late 1920s, applied public administrators were adopting a norm of neutrality, which Louis Brownlow, a former city manager and a future advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt, later called a passion for anonymity. He meant that public administrators, or at least some of them, should act as neutral agents (Neustadt, 1963).21 The objectification of scores and indexes aimed at the public administrators norm of neutrality or the scientists value-free observation. But the scorecard and the index are not neutral. The selection of items, weighting of selected items, and assignment of scores to observations all reflect normative decisions. Quantification did not eliminate normative decisions; it simply compressed them into a concise result.
RESULTS
It has been alleged that early 20th-century public administrators were interested primarily in tax savings or, at most, in the narrower sense of efficiency, that is, getting the most output from the least input (Bouckaert, 1992, p. 17; Stivers, 2000; Waldo, 1948). D. Williams (2003) has shown that the early innovators did not believe that management efficiency would guarantee good results, but they believed that management in efficiency would likely lead to poor results. In part, this confusion rests on the meaning of the word efficiency. In the current era, organizational efficiency is a nearly mechanical notion. At the beginning of the 20th century, the mechanical analogy was less exact. In the introductory chapter of Efficient Democracy (1907), Allen related a story of the Lyman School for Boys:
A chart was prepared for the Chicago Exposition to portray graphically this information. But to the chagrin of all, the chart when completed showed that a distressingly large percentage of the boys were serving second and third sentences at various penal institutions, while a painfully small
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percentage could be referred to with pride. The directors believed their chart and devised for future guidance a new test, namely, results counted, efficiency. (p. 10)
Here, efficiency is defined by results, not the reverse. Throughout this period, the point was normally to obtain good results, not merely to save money, although there were advocates of the latter. With Ogburn, we see that results such as infant mortality or fire loss remained of interest in the late 1910s. With Ridley, M. Walker, and Cramer, results continued to be of interest in the late 1920s. Categories for which results were observed did not much change. For example, each of Ridleys categories was addressed in Brueres The New City Government (1912b). Between Bruere and Allen (1907), most of M. Walkers and Cramers categories were addressed, as well. The concept of results was never adequately clarified. Infant mortality and fire loss clearly relate to socially desirable outcomes. However, volume measures, such as the number of books circulated, are output measures. Socially desirable outcomes would depend on the nature of the books and what was done with them. Park acreage per capita is a service capacity measure. To some degree, results depended on what could be measured, for example, Ridleys recommended measuring police service outcomes with complaints, a potentially poor proxy for the intensity of criminal activity. This early literature anticipates performance monitoring or uses of secondary data, not program evaluation studies. So, measures must be easily and routinely observable.22 There were competing views about results. The increasing sophistication of cost accounting reflects a trend toward getting a clear grasp of government costs. Costs were growing at an alarming rate, often attributed to the ever-expanding scope of government. However, Upson (1922) examined the link between costs and expanded scope and concluded, In truth, these new activities are not as costly as the expansion and doing better old ones (p. 318). He recommended what today would be called reengineering government: For example, lower police costs cannot come thru improved foot patrol methods, but by daring to question the efficiency of this whole activity (Upson, 1922, p. 319). As Cramers (1929) study shows, the aim was to get better results while containing costs.23 Overall, the development is mixed. The concern over results neither advanced nor retreated. Some technical advances were achieved. However, some needed clarifications were not made, and concerns for pure cost suppression continued to compete with interest in achieving results.
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ADVOCACY
At the onset of these activities, municipal research was promoted as advancing social causes by increasing governments capacity to make better communities. The NYBMR, particularly Allen, did not shrink at demanding services, especially for the poor or dependent. During the 1910s, the social survey was a device for validating demands for increased governmental services from sewage systems to fire inspection to education. However, in the 1920s, this advocacy role began to fade. The new professional city managers took a stance of neutral competence rather than policy advocacy. During this same period, measurement moved away from the qualitative social survey that conveyed the rich contextual nature of social problems to the quantitative study that provided a summary score or set of proportions that represented effectiveness and efficiency. The summary score did not necessarily provide the compelling story that was often communicated in the report of social surveys, so the need for corrective action could be more easily ignored. Also, summary scores might provide less specific guidance for improvement. A community might improve its score by addressing a number of smaller and less important problems rather than facing its more severe shortcomings directly. Measurement also became increasingly the province of experts and academics. These groups were involved in measurement from the start. However, during the 1910s and early 1920s, the social survey was frequently conducted by citizen volunteers. In the middle of the 1920s, academics took a greater lead, attending to such matters as the appropriate weights of the various components of the survey. After Karl Pearson and R. A. Fisher made statistics into a general tool for study of social data in the early 20th century, the use of more sophisticated methods for empirical research began to spread through the academic community (Porter, 1986; Stigler, 1986, 1999). This new sophistication made empirical research the exclusive province of experts. Academics were not necessarily as interested in advocacy as were citizen activists. Ridley, himself, was an expert and an academic. His Measuring Municipal Government (1927b) is a product of his dissertation at the School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. In 1929, he became the executive director of the International City Managers Association (as it was then named) where he stayed until 1956. He taught measurement of government activities at the University of Chicago during the 1930s (Augier & March, 2001). He became a leading spokesman for
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governmental measurement, a practice that became more associated with management competence than policy advocacy.
COMMUNICATION WITH THE PUBLIC
The three original codirectors of the NYBMRAllen, Cleveland, and Brueremade repeated efforts to educate the public about government. Providing for informed public opinion was one of Allens (1907) five principles of efficient citizenship to help the public fulfill their citizenship duties, a view that Bruere (1912a) also articulated. Central to efficient citizenship was the collection and analysis of data about government that would then be made public through reports and news accounts. Cleveland was, perhaps, less committed to this view. Jonathan Kahn (1997) and Hindy Lauer Schachter (1997) argued that Allen was forced out of NYBMR largely because of his conflicts with Cleveland and patrons over public information. William Allen went to such great trouble to communicate with the public that he came into conflict with the Rockefeller foundation, the NYBMRs chief patron (Schachter, 1997). Not only did the NYBMR frequently distribute material directly to the public (Kahn, 1997; Schachter, 1997), the research bureaus that sprang up in its likeness typically created public communication organs such at the Toledo City Journal or the Philadelphia Citizens Business. The most intense form of public communication may be the Budget Exhibit, a public event communicating governmental performance data to the public and conducted by the NYBMR in 1908 and 1909 and by New York City with NYBMR assistance in 1910 and 1911. The Budget Exhibit reached more than 1 million people in 1911 (Kahn, 1997; D. Williams, 2003). The later conflict over executive budgeting centered, in part, on the abandonment, or at least deemphasis, of the public information objective for analytic practices (Allen, 1917; Chase, 1917; Schachter, 1997). Kahn (1997) argued that these sorts of activities reflected intellectual and political elitism; that is, the point of these efforts was to overcome the publics inability or unwillingness to understand government. There is, probably, some truth to this assertion. The very idea of an organization for research into government rests on the idea that citizens require the aid of experts to mediate information such as budgets and government performance. This plan suggests that experts are elite consumers of governmental data who can determine what the public and public officials really need
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to know. This plan borders on paternalism. It also navely risks treating experts value judgments as if they were facts. Still, the plan is not unrealistic or necessarily anti-democratic. It is not unreasonable to suppose that voluminous and complex information about government requires some mediation for public consumption. The whole point of such activities as performance measurement (in 1907 or in 2003) would seem to be just that: Mediate difficult information to aid consumers. Any such plan implicitly assumes that the mediators are more expert in accessing the information; thus, it is somewhat elitist. But, there appears to be no way out of this result except to leave the public to its own devices in trying to understand difficult material. The attempt to mediate likely incorporates the mediators value judgments, as well. But this effect is an inescapable consequence of analysis, not evidence of deliberate undermining of democracy. In 1923, Upson said, Given to the press and the public, these operating statements would furnish an outside check, that should go a long way towards stimulating a degree of efficiency in public business at present unknown (p. 122). This statement reflects two matters. First, as late as 1923, there was still considerable support for communicating performance data to the public. Second, at the same time, there was limited progress in producing the sort of performance data to be so communicated. In 1927, Ridley was not clear who he intended to receive the products of his measurement. In part, this silence may be because he was defining measures, not using them; but he continued into a career focused on serving government professionals and, only indirectly, the public. Although Mabel Walker produced an analysis comparing governmental contribution to quality of life in 160 cities, she published it in her dissertation (1930) and in The American City Magazine (1929), a trade journal for public officials, rather than in the popular press. However, in her dissertation she took note that Citizens Business, a publication of the Philadelphia Bureau of Municipal Research intended for the public, picked up and summarized her American City Magazine article (Bureau of Municipal Research of Philadelphia, 1929; M. Walker, 1930, p. 111). Cramers (1929) report appears to be more clearly targeted to the public. In summary, in the early days of the NYBMR, reports of what and how the government was doing were clearly intended for the public. By 1930, this purpose had faded in significance and was partly replaced by an objective to communicate to government professionals.
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GOVERNANCE
Ridleys largest change from prior practices is not the inclusion of various services as the subjects of observationall of the services he discussed were examined by Bruere and Allennor even particularly the addition of expert measurement. It is the narrowing of focus to government service alone. Before Ridley, municipal research included the measurement of governance, or the study of how well the government complies with the norm of democratic government (Allen, 1907; Beard, 1923; Bruere, 1912b; Upson, 1924b). In Efficient Democracy, Allen (1907, p. 273) suggested that the level of public participation in government decision making is an important measure of democracy. Bruere (1912b, pp. 376-400) took this advice and devoted 25 pages of his study of commission government to the examination of citizen control and cooperation. It was also during this period that the citizen survey movement developed; this movement might be viewed as a community and governmental self-study from the point of view of citizens (Aronovici, 1910, 1916). In his 1923 study of Tokyo, Beard (1923, pp. 137-161) devoted more than an eighth of the entire study to The Spirit and Practice of Self-Government in Tokyo. Even Upsons (1924b, pp. 521-527) study of Cincinnati includes a short section on Citizen Influence on Government. William Munros (1926) recommendations from the same period as Upson and Ridley are much more heavily oriented to governance and consider such matters as whether the city has home rule, the characteristics of the city charter, the number of elective offices, the size of council, and the terms of office. Although Ridley acknowledged Munro, whose focus is primarily governance, Ridleys own focus was on government service. In fact, neither Ridley nor M. Walker included any measure of governance. Although Cramer (1929) considered voter participation, he excluded this measure from his index. Ridley and Cramer were interested in how government agencies performed assigned tasks. Similarly, M. Walkers question was: What is the social product of government activity? By asking narrower questions, they gave up something and gained something. They gave up the political component of the municipal research program. At least in principle, fire protection, or even the volume of library circulation, can be equally delivered by democratic or autocratic governments. What they gained was focus. This focus permitted continued advances in measuring the particulars of government. One object of study, the
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adherence to democratic form, was no longer to be evaluated; however, another important object, satisfaction of public demand, remained important. Throughout the 20th century, Americans have sought increased public service but have resisted taxes. Focused performance measurement could serve as a technical tool to meet these objectives. It is as a focused technical tool that performance measurement became intimately associated with productivity improvement.
DECLINE IN ACTIVISM
Several of the changes over this periodreduced advocacy, moderation of interest in communicating with the public, and reduced interest in governancecollectively amount to a decline in activism among government reformers. Why did the activists of 1910 turn into the technicians of 1930? A full exploration of this question is beyond the scope of this article. However, we can consider some of the major theses that have been raised. Haber (1964) suggested that the combined effect of the First World War and the growing distrust of socialism killed activist progressivism. On this thesis, the decline in public administration is symptomatic of the broader decline across the society. Stivers (2000) suggested that the choice to develop in the direction of technical competence was implicitly a defensive masculine form of social activism that contained in its origins the destiny of preference for technical neutrality. Schachter (1997) and Roberts (1994) suggested that the Rockefeller foundation deliberately killed social activism in public administration. Schachter suggested that this suppression resulted from policy differences between Rockefellers trusted insiders and William H. Allen in particular. Roberts argued that Rockefellers choices were between supporting the development of a seemingly neutral public administration and providing no support at all because the public would not tolerate Rockefeller activism. One should not overlook the fact that the political environment had changed. In the 1890s when the NML was first conceptualizing these developments, Jeffersonian government prevailed with minor inroads of Hamiltonian resurgence in the growing power of some mayors. By the 1920s, the Hamiltonians had won; mayors, governors, and city managers were powerful. After the passage of the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, it was just a matter of time before the president would be the most powerful official of all. Activism arose in the transition period but declined when this period ended. In the transition period, performance measurement served activism as it provided an explanation as to how leg-
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islators were not giving up very much power to executives. When this explanation was no longer needed, performance measurement was not discarded; it was refocused to serve the more limited technical needs within the executive. CONCLUSION By 1930, performance measurement had a quarter century of practice behind it. It evolved from a more inclusive study of government to a narrower and more sophisticated study of government service. It was no longer closely linked to policy advocacy; however, its apparent objectivity and neutrality hid unexamined value judgments. It was less closely linked with the public but more closely linked with government management. Methodological sophistication brought new problems, such as difficulties with relative weights for indexes. Quantification sometimes became an end in itself. Critical concepts such as results remained unclarified. By the end of this period, performance measurement was a practice, not simply an objective or recent innovation. M. Walker and Cramers comparative studies depended, in part, on routine collection of data that was only contemplated in 1900. Ridley had begun to bring intellectual rigor to outcomes measurement. The qualitative survey had become the quantitative index. Governmental cost accounting had abandoned the close link to budget accounting thereby allowing more effective development. This history also shows us that performance measurement does not refer to a particular empirical technique. Instead, it refers to the application of relevant techniques to the problem of observing government at work; after Ridley, that meant the delivery of government services. These empirical techniques included budget and cost accounting and collection of data on output of government activities and the social conditions that could reasonably be thought to depend to some degree on successful government service. Techniques, such as either the modern survey or the social survey of 1900, are relevant to the degree that they get to the objective observation of the method, efficiency, product, or outcome of government service. In 1906, the point of such observation was to inform the citizenry so that they could fulfill citizen duties. By 1930, the point had become much more management orientedto assist the mayor, city manager, governor, or expert administrator to get good results out of limited resources.
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NOTES
1. Normalization by population is a rudimentary cost accounting idea. It shows costs as they are experienced by the taxpayer but not as they are generated by activities. However, in 1900, this rudimentary approach to normalization reflected considerable advance over the not-too-distant past. 2. Tammany Hall was the most powerful political machine in New York City, and it was associated with corruption for a century after 1850. 3. The Philadelphia and Chicago studies had technical assistance from the New York Bureau of Municipal Research (NYBMR). 4. The Institute of Public Administration, which is the reorganized NYBMR, continues to conduct studies that could reasonably be thought to descend from the survey. 5. Ridley completed his text as his dissertation at Syracuse University. M. Walker completed hers as a dissertation at Johns Hopkins University. During the time Mabel Walker prepared her dissertation, Frank Goodnow, the renowned political scientist, was president of Johns Hopkins, which was also closely associated with the Institute of Government Research (Brookings Institute) that was headed by William F. Willoughby. 6. Governmental cost accounting, another technical area, also borrowed directly or indirectly from scientific management. Changes from earlier functional accounting may have been motivated, in part, by Cookes criticism. 7. The early Bureau of Municipal Research had three directors, which may be contrary to the principle of hierarchy later advocated by Luther Gulick. Other contrasts between the NYBMRs agenda and scientific management originate in the early NYBMR period. The reader should not set too much store by the NYBMRs apparent use of distributed leadership. It was, from its origins, associated with advocates of a strong executive in government, whether it followed this practice itself or not. 8. This survey is the settlement house social survey, not the survey of modern social science. 9. The random-sample survey of a population had not developed at this time; these interviews were, in part, the available alternative. However, the selected citizens were not intended to be representative; they were community leaders. 10. Commission government is a form of municipal government where a small number of legislators are elected and each legislator serves as a department head. This form of government is the antithesis of the strong executive government promoted by most government reformers of the era. 11. Publications 66 through 73 of the Wisconsin University Extension comprise the whole citizen survey instrument, which is 199 pages in length. 12. These government studies could also be classified as government research (the first category in this section). They are included in this category to emphasize the similarity of approach to information gathering. 13. Much of the work in surveys and scorecards was supported, at least in part, by the Russell Sage Foundation. Harriet Bartlett (1928) , in an early account of the social survey, ascribed this relationship to the fortuitous coincidence of timing: The Russell Sage Foundation, founded just as the Pittsburgh survey was getting under way, gave it considerable support (p. 343). 14. Economic indexes are functionally similar to scorecards, but this research does not show a common ancestor. 15. The wording of these labels is his.
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16. Aggregating cost per capita data in this manner is inaccurate, because it assigns too much weight to the preferred rank level for proportionately smaller service costs. It would be more accurate to aggregate costs across service categories, then compute per capita costs, and then rank. Cramer appeared to have used his method to provide as many points to costs as were available to service quality. Simple weighting adjustments would have been more reasonable. 17. For all the rest, he offered a scant 7 pages of text, which includes an introduction and conclusion, and 13 pages of appendixes that are abstracts of principal materials found in his bibliography. 18. By 1929, the issue of per capita costs was anachronistic. Good quality cost accounting methods were available, and cost per unit of service would have been more meaningful. Per capita costs are insensitive to the factors of service demand. Although they correctly reflect the taxpayers experience, they do not effectively measure governmental efficiency. 19. Her discussion in footnote 11 reveals concerns for normalizing the data but ignores the fact that her adjustments change the order of results when averaged over multiple categories. 20. In addition to the problems discussed here, no one seemed to take notice of items assigned zero weight, that is, that matters included in any scorecard, survey, or index represented only a nonrandom sample of matters that could be included. 21. Brownlow wrote the forward to Clarence Ridleys 1934 book on city management (Ridley & Nolting, 1934). 22. In addition, there is nothing in this literature that attends to possible data manipulation, as with watering garbage to increase apparent volume or minimizing the severity of recorded criminal complaints. 23. For a more extreme view, see Are We Spending Too Much for Government? (Vandegrift, 1927).
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Daniel W. Williams has taught at the Baruch School of Public Affairs since 1995. Before that, he was the budget director for the Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services. Other articles include Reinventing the Proverbs of Government, Public Administration Review (2000); Before Performance Measurement, Administrative Theory and Praxis (2002); and Measuring Government in the Early Twentieth Century, Public Administration Review (2003).

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ADMINISTRATION Williams / EVOLUTION & SOCIETY OF PERFORMANCE / May 2004 MEASUREMENT