Les représentations de la performance des directeurs d’Etablissements et Services Médico-Sociaux

Within the framework of movements such as New Public Management many public sector organisations or organisations providing contracted out public services have had to sign up to a system of measurement and performance improvement. Many studies have been conducted on the future of management tools in these organisations, but only a few are focused on the relationships of operational actors with the concepts of "performance". In this article, we examine the relationship between the directors of the Institute for Medico-Social Services (ESMS) with the discourse on performance discourse. We relied on it for carrying out 32 semi-structured interviews with medico-social directors. The objective of this article is to show that the concept of performance can be understood by key actors in these organisations in many ways, and that these interpretations can be far removed from the definitions proposed by the academic literature or by the public authorities (the controlling authority of these structures). We identify five individual profiles in their relation to performance : the total rejection of the concept to its acceptance in a multidimensional approach (financial, organizational, social and societal).