Collaborative gaming: When principals and agents agree to game the system
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Author | Jon Pierre,Jenny Fine Licht |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12720 |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Collaborative gaming: When principals and agents
agree to game the system
Jon Pierre
1
| Jenny de Fine Licht
2
1
Department of Political Science, University
of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
2
School of Public Administration, University
of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
Correspondence
Jon Pierre, Department of Political Science,
University of Gothenburg, P.O. Box 711,
SE-405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden.
Email: jon.pierre@pol.gu.se
Funding information
Riksbankens Jubileumsfond; The Swedish
Foundation for Humanities and Social
Sciences, Grant/Award Number:
SGO14-1174:1
Abstract
This paper presents a previously unexplored type of gaming
of performance data, collaborative gaming, where the per-
formance measurement system incentivizes the executive
and an agency to game collaboratively. The paper shows
how overlapping incentives between government depart-
ments and agencies to present successful implementation
of programs can drive collaboration to modify performance
targets and/or performance measurements. The argument
is illustrated by two brief case studies of collaboration
between the Swedish Department of Employment and the
Swedish Public Employment Service in the implementation
of labor-market programs.
1|INTRODUCTION
This paper explores a particular type of performance measurement gaming where a government department and an
executive agency agree to manipulate performance targets and/or performance measurements in order to produce a
more favorable account of the implementation of a government program. The logic sustaining such “collaborative
gaming”is that both parties have significant stakes in a successful delivery of a program; the department haspolitical
incentives to present its programs as appropriately designed to address policy problems while the agency has finan-
cial and professional incentives to hit or surpass its performance targets. We use two illustrative case studies drawn
from the Swedish labor market administration to explore the logic of collaborative gaming.
The literature offers several somewhatbroad definitions ofgaming and gaming strategies in relationto performance
measurements (see Benaine,2020). Hood (2006, p. 518)thus defines gaming as “strategic behaviorin relation to target
systems”; Kelman and Friedman (2009, p. 924) see gaming as “behavior thatconsumes real resources butproduces no
genuine performance improvement even on a measureddimension”; while Courtyand Marschke (2007, p. 905) suggest
Received: 10 March 2020 Revised: 1 November 2020 Accepted: 23 December 2020
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12720
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which
permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no
modifications or adaptations are made.
© 2021 The Authors. Public Administration published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Public Admin. 2021;99:711–722. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm 711
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