Performance management and neo-liberal labour market governance: the case of the UK

The use of performance management in the private sector was prefaced by the establishment of qualitatively new forms of corporate entities in the early years of the twentieth century, particularly in the United States. These vast new corporations involved increasing separation of ownership from control and the establishment of substantial corporate management bureaucracies to organise often technical and geographically diverse tasks and processes. As such, the use of performance management became a key corporate governance tool to extend control to disparate, highly hierarchical and complex organisations and business processes (Drucker, 1955; Kennerley & Neely, 2001, p. 146).