Questioning Performance Measurement: Metrics, Organizations and Power

Guy Redden

Mar 2019 · SAGE

About this ebook

Questioning Performance Measurement: Metrics, Organizations and Power is the first book to interrogate the organizational turn towards performance metrics critically. Performance measurement is used to evaluate a diverse range of activities throughout the private, public and non-governmental sectors. But in an increasingly data driven world, what does it really mean to measure ‘performance’? Taking a sociology of quantification perspective, this book traces the rise of performance measurement, questions its methods and objectivity, and examines the social significance of the flood of numbers through which value is represented and actors are held accountable.

An illuminating read for students, scholars and practitioners across Organization Studies, Sociology, Business and Management, Public Policy and Administration.

About the author

Guy Redden is Associate Professor in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. His research in the field of cultural economy centres upon the diffusion of contemporary economic rationalities through media, popular culture and institutions. A central theme of his work is how patterns of commodification and marketization interact with cultural change and social reform, especially with regard to the broad formative context of ‘neoliberalism’. He has co-edited two books and authored or co-authored over forty articles, most recently in Television and New Media and Critical Sociology.