Performance measurement and management in the public sector: state of the art and research opportunities

Purpose - Since the 1980s, performance measurement and management (PMM) has been described as an essential element of new public management (NPM) reforms. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the current state of the art and future research opportunities for PMM in public sector management. Design/methodology/approach - The paper carried out a bibliometric literature review using two main techniques named (1) performance analysis and (2) science mapping techniques. It investigated the academic research area describing the main publications' trend, the conceptual structure and its evolution from 1996 to 2019. Findings - The results highlighted the growing relevance of PMM research in public organisations and confirmed a great interest of the business, management and accounting literature on PMM in public sector management. Furthermore, the results also described a conceptual structure of the public PMM literature analysed and its evolution being too generic to answer public organisations' needs. The results identified five main research gaps and research opportunities. Originality/value - Although the adoption of rigorous bibliometric techniques was recognised as being useful for assessing the academic research study, the paper describes the business, management and accounting literature contributing to new theoretical and practical future opportunities.