Lifting the veil of Maya: measuring the implementation gap of public management reforms in Italy

The purpose of this paper is to build a working definition of public administration's management capacity (PA-MANCAP) aiming at empirically testing the existence and size of an implementation gap in public management reforms in Italy.Design/methodology/approach – A confirmatory factor analysis is developed to assess the validity of the proposed operational measure. Data are taken from a survey administered on 204 local governments in Italy.Findings – The validity of the measure is assessed for all the attributes that conceptualize PA-MANCAP except for the information and communication technology dimension. Findings from a survey of 102 major Italian municipalities indicate a situation with areas of light and shadow with regard to the implementation of public management reforms in Italy.Originality/value –