Institutional isomorphism, negativity bias and performance information use by politicians: A survey experiment
| Published date | 01 March 2020 |
| Author | Bert George,Martin Baekgaard,Adelien Decramer,Mieke Audenaert,Stijn Goeminne |
| Date | 01 March 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12390 |
SYMPOSIUM ARTICLE
Institutional isomorphism, negativity bias and
performance information use by politicians:
A survey experiment
Bert George
1
|Martin Baekgaard
2
|Adelien Decramer
3
|
Mieke Audenaert
3
|Stijn Goeminne
4
1
Department of Public Administration,
Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam,
The Netherlands
2
Department of Political Science, University of
Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark
3
Department of Human Resource
Management and Organizational Behaviour,
University of Gent, Gent, Belgium
4
Department of Public Finance, Governance
and Management, University of Gent, Gent,
Belgium
Correspondence
Bert George, Department of Public
Administration, Erasmus University
Rotterdam, Burgemeester Oudlaan
50, Rotterdam 3000 DR, The Netherlands.
Email: george@fsw.eur.nl
New Public Management popularized performance measurement
in public organizations. Underlying performance measurement's
popularity is the assumption that it injects performance informa-
tion (PI) into decision-making, thus rationalizing the ensuing deci-
sions. Despite its popularity, performance measurement is
criticized. In part, this criticism results from the limited knowledge
of the conditions under which PI is purposefully used by politi-
cians. We conducted a survey experiment based on real PI with
1,240 politicians. We hypothesized that PI has a positive impact
on performance information use (PIU) when PI is benchmarked
with coercive, mimetic or normative pressures. Moreover, due to
negativity bias we expected this positive impact to be stronger
when PI signals low performance. We found that normative pres-
sures had a positive impact on actual PIU while coercive pressures
positively affected intended PIU. Negativity bias is only relevant
when linked to coercive pressures and intended PIU for analysing
the organization's finances.
1|INTRODUCTION
The advent of New Public Management (NPM)—a focus on accountability, effectiveness and efficiency—has ignited
the popularity of performance measurement in public organizations (Hood 1991; Osborne 2006). Performance mea-
surement has been conceptualized as an approach to strategy implementation which includes (a) using performance
information to track the realization of strategic goals over time, (b) setting targets for this information and evaluating
performance against those targets and (c) comparing performance information across departments and with other
organizations (Poister et al. 2013; George and Desmidt 2018). Underlying its popularity is the assumption that
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12390
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any
medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
© 2018 The Authors. Public Administration published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
14 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm Public Administration. 2020;98:14–28.
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