WAGE affiliate and La Follette School Professor Donald Moynihan'’s 2008 book, The Dynamics of Performance Management: Constructing Information and Reform, won the Best Book Award from the Public and Nonprofit Division of the Academy of Management. Moynihan received the award August 9 at the academy’s meeting in Chicago. Books nominated for the award make a significant contribution to modern management theory and/or practice by exploring the public and nonprofit sectors, and the relationships among public, nonprofit, and private sector organizations.

The Dynamics of Performance Management examines the growth and implementation of reforms intended to make government work better. The book illustrates how governments have emphasized some aspects of performance management—such as building measurement systems to acquire more performance data—but have neglected wider organizational change that would facilitate the use of such information. In his analysis of why and how governments in the United States have moved to performance systems, Moynihan identifies agency leadership, culture, and resources as keys to better implementation, goal-based learning, and improved outcomes.  The book also emphasizes that performance data fits within a political system, and is selected, interepreted and disseminated in to serve the interests of particular agencies and individuals in that system.

The book has been reviewed positively in a number of major journals, including Public Administration Review, Governance, and Journal of Public Administration Research & Theory. In Public Administration Review, Professor Katherine Willoughby describes the book as “a wonderfully written text on the psychology of performance management.”