Successful Diffusion of a Failed Policy: The case of pay-for-performance in the US federal government

Pay-for-performance (PFP) is a popular management approach that came out of the business sector and was adopted as a centre piece of the 1978 US Civil Service Reform Act. An extensive set of studies assess PFP as largely unsuccessful in the federal government, and many of the private sector studies also found problems in PFP in the private sector. Yet, PFP continues to be adopted by governments in Europe, the United States and Australia. Our...