JPART 20:i261–i279 INCENTIVES AND PUBLIC SERVICE PERFORMANCE: A SPECIAL ISSUE Does Public Service Performance Affect Top Management Turnover? George A. Boyne*, Oliver James † , Peter John ‡ , Nicolai Petrovsky § *Cardiff University;  University of Exeter; ‡University of Manchester; §University of Kentucky ABSTRACT Political and organizational theories suggest that the turnover of chief executives and other members of senior management teams are likely to be influenced by public service performance. We use a panel data set of 148 English local governments over 4 years to test this proposition. The empirical results show that performance has a negative effect on turnover, but that this effect is weaker for chief executives than for members of their senior management teams. In addition, top team turnover is higher in the years following a chief executive succession. The evidence suggests that chief executives can influence top team turnover by attributing responsibility for poor organizational performance to other senior managers. In this article, we explore whether public service performance makes a difference to the turnover of top managers in public organizations. This is an important question because most advanced democratic systems of government partially insulate top management (de- fined as chief executives and other senior managers) from politicians’ and other stakehold- ers’ judgments about performance, so that they can get on with managing services. Whereas fewer posts in the United States enjoy such protection than in most other advanced democ- racies, a large number of managerial posts in public organizations are protected against dismissal, which can only occur through procedures devised to guarantee due process. Given these protections, we should not expect a strong effect of performance on senior management change. On the other hand, senior managers are expected to be accountable for performance and to accept responsibility for results, ultimately by resigning or being dismissed from their positions, which implies there is such an effect. The latter view has become more prominent with New Public Management reforms emphasizing both man- aging for results and accountable management (Hood 1991; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004). These developments raise the question of whether, and in what way, organizational per- formance affects senior management team turnover. Are top officials more likely to retain their posts when public service standards are deemed to be good, and to move on when standards are perceived as weak? Further, does the impact of performance on turnover differ between chief executives and other senior officials in public organizations? In Author order is alphabetical: all make an equal contribution to the article. Address correspondence to the author at boyne@cardiff.ac.uk. doi:10.1093/jopart/muq024 ª The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Inc. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org at University Library on August 9, 2010 http://jpart.oxfordjournals.org Downloaded from