Efficiency and performance in the International Public Organizations

• Author: Drumea C.
• Pages: 125-132

Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov

Series V: Economic Sciences • Vol. 10 (59) No. 2 - 2017

Efficiency and performance in the International

Public Organizations

Cristina DRUMEA1

Abstract: The paper explores a recent tendency manifested in the international

organizations labor market under the pressure of budget cuts dictated by stakeholders. It

focuses on the new reality of the administration work field, emphasizing cost cuts in view of

obtaining efficiency, exploring ways to measure work performance in this milieu and the

potential linkage between resizing and performance indicators. A brief analysis of the cost

cut processes and their disputable effects in large public organizations efficiency is

undertaken. The research is empirical, but led by factual observations and data under

institutional strain prompted by this type of change in large public organizations

Key-words: efficiency, performance, organizational change, public organizations

1. Introduction

In many languages there is almost no difference in terminology between efficiency

and performance, especially when it comes to measuring these features of the

employee’s work, but also in generic terms when discussing about public

organizations.

In the same line of thought, the discussion on performance in the economic

literature is done in parallel with the one about efficiency. Speaking about the latter

is easier and it compensates for the additional management difficulties that the

public organization has over private companies. Many differences exist though

between the two types of entities, but some similarities are to be depicted: adaptive

behavior is one of them and it needs further explanation.

Public organizations frequently ignore this feature due to the lesser speed in

reaction in comparison with the entities in the private sector. This does not mean

that adaptiveness does not exist in the public organizations, on the contrary: they are

adaptive systems that live, grow, change over time, and die. In an analogy with

organisms that are shaped by their DNA, Osborne (2007) finds that the public

organizations contain in their modus vivendi some sort of instructions for

1 Transilvania University of Braşov, cristina.drumea@unitbv.ro