People Management in Italian Ministries: Antecedents, Choices and Effects of Individual Performance Appraisal

Scholars have pointed out the need for improvement and refinement in public management research, also depending on the role of public administration for sustainable development. Because government organizations employ a sub- stantial portion of the workforce, management practices in the public sector are critical areas for designing, implementing and delivering policies that can achieve the goals set forth in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. For these purposes, and in implementation of the Next Generation EU (NGEU) programme, Italy recently launched an ambitious National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) which includes, among other things, ups- killing goals for staff employed, following the modernization process that has involved the Italian public sector in the last decades, with the Decree n. 150/ 2009. Aiming both to understand the extent of the application of the reform and to answer some basic questions (why, what and how) concerning Indi- vidual Performance Appraisal Systems (IPAS), we conducted a content analysis on the 220 documents already produced by the Italian Ministries. The study has been conducted in two different steps of the reform process and provides solid evidence of the reforms’ effects on designing and implementing individual performance systems. The analyzed documents reveal no longer-term vision in implementing the IPAS that involves some critical performance management utilities such as training, development, fair pay and deployment of employees, raising new questions about a sustainable approach to the individual performance management process even in public organizations.