Book excerpt: This book is intended for practitioners, students, and researchers who are interested in designing, using, assessing, and researching performance management systems. Managerial personnel involved in such activity will hold many beliefs about how their organization functions. This text uses the philosophy of pragmatic constructivism to show how managerial beliefs that underlie action can be made explicit and so facilitate their assessment and improvement. This involves recognizing and integrating the four dimensions (facts, possibilities, values, and communication) that represent how managers relate to the reality in which they operate. When managerial beliefs are based on an accurate representation of reality, they are more likely to be successful. Problems occur where reality is misrepresented in managerial beliefs. This is especially so in performance management, as the book illustrates using real-world examples. Specific topics addressed include planning and decision making, performance management of investment center managers, strategic performance management, and operational performance management.