Strategic planning in public organization: the influence of performance measurement on decision maker's choices

In recent years, a growing number of scholars have debated the role of performance measurement, transparency, and accountability in strengthening the link between public administration and citizens. Moreover, the belief that more trust and satisfaction could lead to better governance has persuaded a growing number of States to shift from a pure efficiency orientation to a more extensive customer-centered one, leading to the development of customer satisfaction standards for Public Administrations and their services. This paper aims to fill the gap in theoretical and empirical research regarding the last and weakest link of the satisfaction-performance chain - the analysis of if and how survey outputs actually influence the decision maker’s choice and the role of public organization structure and rules as well as personal factors in this process - by analyzing the aforesaid topics from both a theoretical and empirical point of view by means of an exploratory empirical study involving a sample of public managers in Italian local government.