Salvatore Tomaselli

A dynamic performance management approach to support local strategic planning

In spite of efforts devoted in the last decades to local strategic planning, such field of research and practice has been frequently characterized by a lack of implementation. We argue here that this phenomenon is due to the limitations of the static and linear approach to local strategic planning in fostering the development of common shared view among policy makers on the relevant system’s structure and behavior. By means of a case-study, we illustrate how an approach based on system dynamics modeling applied to Performance Management can be useful to overcome such weaknesses. The proposed approach enhances a better understanding of the causes and effects related to adopted policies, undertaken actions and targeted results. This helps key-players in an area to overcome possible barriers to collaboration, and therefore to adopt a combined “institutional and inter-institutional” perspective of performance.