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1. Introduction
In September 2016, the US congress banking commission imposed sanctions on Wells Fargo after the revelation that more than two million bank accounts had been opened without customer authorisation. This financial scandal which involved a leading bank in the United States of America, revealed that the employees opened unauthorised accounts, under pressure from constraints linked to performance indicators (in particular the number of accounts per customer). The performance measurement thus generated effects, in terms of breaches of the rules and procedures by the employees, customer dissatisfaction and finally, financial loss with a fall in the value of the bank's shares. After the revelation that two million unauthorised accounts had been created, Wells Fargo finally decided in January 2017 to reinforce its internal control systems and to abandon its incentive system in favour of a performance appraisal method based on customer satisfaction indicators.
From the point of view of academic research in accounting, performance measurements are presented as devices with both empowering and constraining (E&C) effects. Both effects are present in the levers of control (loc) perspective developed by Robert Simons. In this literature, the concept of “balance” is important for managing the relationship between the two effects. The literature underlines the role of interactive processes in balancing the E&C effects. This paper proposes to extend this analysis of E&C effects by looking at them in conjunction with the role of dialogue.
In this paper, measurement of performance is studied by analysing user satisfaction indicators in the public sector. Managers in the public sector regularly point out the need to measure user satisfaction as a performance criterion. As an example, Osborne and Gaebler (1992) present quality measurement with specific reference to the systemisation of measuring satisfaction as a requirement for public organisations. The argument is based on a logic of consumer-oriented performance management (Aberbach and Christensen, 2005).
We study the effects of user satisfaction indicators in the specific context of a French municipality. It appears helpful to analyse the effects of performance indicators by studying the measurement of user satisfaction in the French public sector, since user satisfaction is regularly presented as a way of measuring performance. Indeed, there is widespread agreement among politicians and public managers in France that user satisfaction is a...