Even managers critical of Pakistan's new performance evaluation system consider its targeting and bonus system a powerful incentive to improve efficiency.

The Institutional Dimension.

With contributions from nearly 80 international experts, this comprehensive resource covers diverse issues, aspects, and features of public administration and policy around the world. It focuses on bureaucracy and bureaucratic politics in developing and industrialized countries and emphasizing administrative performance and policy implementation, as well as political system maintenance and regime enhancement. The book covers the history of public administration and bureaucracy in Persia, Greece, Rome, and Byzantium and among the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayas, public administration in small island states, Eastern Europe, and ethics and other contemporary issues in public administration.

This book contains a study of the economics and management of public enterprises in Pakistan. It examines their performance, organizational behavior, relationships with other government organizations outside of the sector, and the issues that confront the public enterprise sector and the government.

This study illustrates the social and political principal that institutions matter. It explores not only how to get institutions to work efficiently, but also how to assess the proper relationship between institutions and development challenges through evaluative techniques.

How can the Bank refine its help to countries embarking on reform of public enterprises?

Performance evaluation is not a simple task in private enterprises and it is all the more complicated in public enterprises. This paper emphasizes three main points: (a) a public enterprise must be evaluated; (b) a public enterprise must not be evaluated like a private enterprise; and (c) a public enterprise should be evaluated by starting with private profit and making a series of adjustments to make it fair to the nation and to managers. This paper suggests introducing a signaling system which consists of three major components. The first is a performance evaluation system, in which national goals are translated into explicit enterprise objectives and quantified in a performance criterion. The second is a performance information system, in which actual achievements are monitored. The third is an incentive system, in which the welfare of managers and workers is linked to national welfare by a pecuniary or non-pecuniary bonus system based on achievement of particular target values of the criterion variables. The paper proposes a phased system of implementation stressing how performance evaluation must be the product of an evolutionary process involving both enterprise managers and government supervisors.

Contract plans help clarify goals, increase managerial autonomy, and open a dialogue between management and government -- but their benefits have been oversold.

This title was first published in 2000: An investigation of the performance of the electric power and telecommunication sectors of Pakistan at the firm level as well as the sector as a whole, seeking to identify and quantify the extent of inefficiencies. Since physical or financial or productivity indicators alone are not able to explain the duality of public infrastructure purposes, the financial and productivity indicators have been used in evaluating the performance of these sectors. Further, a Cobb-Douglas production function has also been used to calculate the trend in the growth of total factor productivity. Economies of scale have also been studied in the case of electric power generation. The results of the study show that in Pakistan one of the usual motives for privatization (to avoid the poor financial results of state enterprises) is not relevant for electricity and telecommunications enterprises. This, however, appears to be due to the financial subsidies they received, through access to low cost loan finance and grants, rather than to their efficiency in operations. By the economic criteria of growth of TFP none of the enterprises do well and two have a negative TFP growth. The case for reforming these enterprises is strong and alternative modes of organization, finance and ownership need to be considered.