Coping with ambiguity: Reconciling external legitimacy and organizational implementation in performance measurement

This article reports the results of a study of the implementation of perfor mance measurement in 74 UK public sector organizations. Performance measure ment is often imposed on organizations by external stakeholders and those c harged with implementation have to reconcile the demands of competing inter ests. These interests reflect the complex relations that 'street-level' pub lic organizations engage in. The authors use institutional theory to make s ense of how these relations, and the competing demands of performance measu rement, are managed.