GUEST EDITORIAL Harnessing the evolutionary advantage of emergent performance management regimes: Strengthening accountability for challenges of modern public administration and governance Carmine Bianchi 1 | Jeremy Hall 2 1 Department of Political Sciences, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy 2 University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, USA Correspondence Carmine Bianchi, Department of Political Sciences, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy. Email: bianchi.carmine@gmail.com THE PERFORMANCE MINDSET Performance management remains a maturing and ever- evolving field of research and practice. The dynamic com- plexity shaping organizations and society requires that the “lenses” needed for framing performance today may significantly differ from those which were successfully adopted two decades ago. This phenomenon is leading to the adoption of new performance management regimes in public administration and governance. The performance mindset is characterized by consistency on one hand, and flexibility and adaptability to meet evolv- ing goals and standards on the other. Although such changes have been particularly sustained in the last decade or so and have been affected by specific challenges in the public sector domain, they originate from earlier times. In particular, the need to deal with change and unpredictability, and to focus on how people and groups interact is not a new phenomenon in performance manage- ment and governance. More than 25 years ago, Otley (1994) recommended that management control systems should enhance learning processes that could lead to an organiza- tional evolution by design, with a focus no longer confined within only the institutional boundaries. In this regard, a pro- active feedforward performance management logic was suggested (Otley, 1999, p. 369). This implies that the emerging problems or opportunities from policy implemen- tation at the departmental level may suggest possible changes in the designed policies at both an institutional and community level. This is the core of a strategic dialogue that would enhance decision makers’ aptitude to perceive weak signals of change promptly and selectively and to properly respond to them, for enhancing resilience and long-term sustainability. The roots of such perceived needs for innovation in per- formance management regimes date back to even earlier times. For example, Hofstede ( 1978, and 1981) observed that a condition under which a system is under control on paper (so called “pseudo control ”) often occurs when behavioral factors lead to divergent actions, with respect to the stan- dards set by cybernetic control mechanisms. Likewise, Ouchi ( 1979) recommended the need to also consider organiza- tional control mechanisms, as part of the design process of a performance management system that could go beyond the use of bureaucratic and market mechanisms. Such extended perspective in performance management systems design may contribute to overcome the risk of an illusion of control (Dermer & Lucas, 1986; Hall, 2017; Otley, 2012) and of incon- sistent policy implementation (Argyris, 1990). The ongoing debate on how to cope with the unintended effects of human behavior associated with inconsistent design of performance standards, and the role that organizational control could play in fostering learning processes in dynamic and complex decision-making, has brought to a flourishing literature characterized by several interrelated research streams in public administration. Such emerging topics raise new challenges today for designing and implementing public sector performance regimes. The purpose of this symposium is to contribute to this broad research field, through evidence-based analysis adopting qualitative and quantitative approaches. AREAS OF EMERGENT AND EVOLVING PERFORMANCE RESEARCH In the described domain, a rising research stream is behavioral public administration (Bhanot & Linos, 2020). Received: 1 August 2023 DOI: 10.1111/puar.13713 Public Admin Rev. 2023;83:1083–1087. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar © 2023 American Society for Public Administration. 1083