Use and Non-Use of Performance Information in the Public Sector: Scratching beneath the surface

Life in the information age includes encountering vast amounts of information. The era reflects how much time is being used for creating, processing, sharing, storing, and using information. In this flood of information, separating facts from fiction is not an easy task; neither is deciding what information should be used. Indeed, there is counter knowledge or fake news, and then there is knowledge that is either usable—or not. In the context of the public sector, fact checking and defining usable information is also part of everyday life, and problems in information use are as evident as they are in the surrounding society. The problematic nature of information use is the main source of inspiration for this thesis, which narrows its focus to the following research question: What reasons stimulate the use and non-use of public sector performance information?

This research question is not a new one, but it deserves revisiting because current theories of performance information use in the field of public management and administration are lacking in terms of coverage and cohesion. The coverage is lacking because the current research has largely neglected the non-use of performance information and the ambiguity associated with factors driving performance information use. Moreover, the studies have not dealt in depth with how intertwined these factors are. Therefore, this work attempts to broadenthecurrenttheorybyexaminingtheneglectedresearchareas. Additionally, cohesion in the study field is lacking because there is no agreed-upon common theoretical ground for studies investigating performance information use in the public sector. Consequently, the researchers have adopted a wide variety of theories in a rather idiosyncratic manner, and this has created a disconnected stage where studies on performance information use do not have a common theoretical background that would be easy to identify. This disconnected stage affects the ability to aggregate the results and makes it difficult to see the big picture describing the current knowledge on performance information use in the public sector.

The thesis at hand is based on pragmatism, and it applies a mixed-method and interdisciplinary approach to construct a theoretical framework joining the disconnected studies. According to this framework, the reasons for performance information use relate to individual factors (i.e., demographic attributes, mental models, and power) and contextual factors (i.e., social pressures, information provider, information channel, and features of information). The four articles that are part of the thesis confirm the applicability of the framework and expanded the current theories of performance information use. As an implication, this thesis offers an archive of reasons that practitioners can use to understand and enhance performance information use. For scholars, the study opens new doors to expand the current theories of performance information use. These opportunities relate to non-use and its value, as well as ambiguous, intertwined reasons for use and non-use.