Performance management of local governments in Turkey: The case of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality

The main objective of public services is to improve the life quality of citizens in line with modern values, while increasing their welfare level. The structure of public administration, as oriented at this purpose, comprises two administrative infrastructures: centralized administration and local administration. Models, which are projected to dynamite the management of profit oriented companies within the private sector, are designated to respective fields of application within the framework of the public-specific structuring and service requirements, thus ensuring that the strategic thinking & planning practices become widespread. Strategic planning used to be for profit oriented organizations at first, but then it has come into question for military public services and basic state administration. The recent change efforts within public organization in particular, underline the importance of planning works, once more. Planning, selecting the required personnel, along with evaluating their performance after being employed, and set forth the quality of the service provided, aswell. With this study, our primary goal is on analysing the manner how a performance management system is applied on employees of municipalities, which is a public organization. In line with this purpose, a questionnaire study was conducted among the employees, thus analysing their perspectives on performance assessment studies. Our study comprises three parts. Within this context, the term "performance management" along with certain basic terms concerning the same, are described in the first part, while setting forth the meaning of these terms from the viewpoint of municipalities. In the second part, we mentioned the local governments in Turkey, the respective definitions and their duties, describing the building blocks of performance management in municipalities, which are recognized as a unit of local government. The third part concentrates upon the perspectives of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality officials & employees with regards to performance assessment process.