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The purpose of this study is to test various hypotheses regarding if managers' voluntarily prefer honesty in self-reported managerial performance (HPR).

This study uses an experimental approach with a data set of 300 Ghanaian employees.

The results confirm that the current trend where employee contracts are underpinned by the classical agency theory (CAT) is problematic, ineffective and costly because it does not appropriately explain the observed behaviour of honesty and partial honesty in self-reported performance or the dishonesty in reporting performance when there is no financial reward to be gained by employees. Therefore MNCs may benefit from a consideration of wider and alternative perspectives. Additionally, stakeholders must consider a strategy of delaying performance-related bonuses (pay-offs) to improve HPR and avoid capping performance-related pay off with an arbitrary threshold. This is because the setting of arbitrary thresholds reduces the established relationship between effort and reward and introduces gaming into the managerial performance reporting process.

Unlike other prior studies that rely on students as surrogates for employees, this study uses actual employees to test the experimental constructs. Aside from the comparatively large data set, this study is the first exploration of the differential effects of national characteristics on HPR in Ghana.

This study aims to explore the main features of managerial performance reporting (MPR) in Ghana and applied a national social-cultural framework to understanding the MPR practices.

It is a qualitative study based on responses from mid-level managerial employees within the top companies in Ghana dubbed Ghana Club 100 (GC100). GC100 includes a balanced mix of companies across varied industry classifications and local and multinational companies (MNCs). This enriches the data and deviates from similar studies that have usually relied on data from multinational companies.

There is evidence that while MPR practices in Ghana do not significantly deviate from western approaches, the underlying reasons for such managerial practices and actions may defer on national socio-cultural lines. This study discusses how various cultural attributions explain the features and motivations for MPR practices in Ghana, including a difference in expectations about the purpose of an MPR.

MNCs must be guided by the findings of this study in their drive to inculcate standardised practices across organisations. It is also essential for MNCs to appreciate the more than usual reliance on verbal cues and symbols in interpreting the appropriate course of action. Regulators must consider systematic activities that reduce the tension and suspicion between them and business actors to improve information transparency. Whistleblowing schemes, while helpful, may not be effective because organisational agents within MPR practice consider themselves part of an “in-group” and manage their dissonance through categorisation, rationalisation and superficial attention to standards. Because of the excessive use of unwritten cues, auditors must consider visits to the client’s operational premises and other independent observation efforts vital to their evidence gathering process.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is among the first to evaluate MPR practices based on direct responses from “persons close to the MPR action” rather than the current overreliance on secondary data sources such as content analysis.

Objectivism is the critical lens used to view organizational communication of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The Government Performance Results Modernization Act of 2010 changed requirements for such communication by mandating that agencies like DHS emphasize performance goals and targets to be achieved in the upcoming years in their performance reporting. Interpretivism is the sense-making lens used to view changes in performance reporting. This study focuses on performance target reductions, new performance measures, and retired performance measures documented in a DHS annual report. Nineteen performance measures were selected and discussed from empirical interpretivist and institutional interpretivist lenses. When intepretivism cannot match what is reported with what would appear to be logical, administrative ironies are established.

Performance management in public sector organizations is a growing phenomenon worldwide. Increasingly, questions are being raised as to its effectiveness in achieving the objective of improving the performance of public sector organizations. Research has shown that there seems to be questionable benefits and many barriers, challenges and problems with implementing performance management and measurement in the public sector environment. The purpose of this paper is to argue that this is due to the lack of focus on the process of managing the implementation of performance measurement. The author aims to review the relevant extant literature to support these assertions and to provide a conceptual framework that integrates these ideas.

This paper reviews the extant literature on public sector performance management and measurement and develops a conceptual framework to explain how public sector performance measurement systems can be made more effective in light of the research evidence.

This paper suggests that three important factors need to be considered in the effective implementation of a performance measurement system in the public sector. They are managerial discretion, a learning and evaluative organizational culture and stakeholder involvement. These three factors are discussed and its impact on performance measurement is explored.

A proposed integrative framework is presented that supports the assertion of the importance of these three factors in influencing how performance measurement can lead to improved performance in public sector organizations. Some potential environmental and institutional constraints are also discussed in implementing some of the suggestions proposed.

The paper provides a model that explains three important facors that need to be considered in implementing an effective performance measurement system in public sector organizations and suggestions for how it can be implemented effectively.

The paper integrates and synthesizes the literature on public sector performance measurement into a comprehensive conceptual framework that explains more explicitly the factors that can influence the effectiveness of a performance measurement system in the public sector.

Through comparative analysis with other social science disciplines, gaps are identified in the performance gaming literature of public administration as it compares to other social science disciplines in order to understand directions for future research in this space.

This study involves a systematic review of the performance gaming literature, focusing on important drivers of performance gaming. Using Google Scholar, Web of Science, and ProQuest Central, the systematic review covers years ranging from 1990 through 2019 and revealed empirical studies that were deemed relevant based on whether an article was (1) an empirical study and (2) performance gaming or cheating behavior was the outcome variable. Out of the 81 articles surmised from the search, 51 were regarded as relevant by meeting these criteria.

The main finding is that public administration has primarily focused on drivers that are embedded in the performance system. The other social sciences (psychology and economics, in particular) focus mainly on individual factors, mostly cognitive in nature. Public administration has also looked at organizational drivers, though this is a burgeoning area. Scholars in public administration may benefit from the other social sciences by determining how individual drivers work within the context of public organizations and how these shape organizational behavior.

Per my knowledge, the paper is the first to systematically compare the performance gaming literature of public administration to other social science disciplines. The paper provides a direction for this burgeoning area of research.

Insufficient achievement of performance management in the federal government is widely acknowledged, despite the absence of an accepted way for determining when and how progress has been made. The process of maturation is traced through a model based on Stinchcombe’s innovation framework, enabling progress toward utilization of performance management to be gauged. The premise of this model is that change has to permeate the organization, reaching the level of routines, to be implemented operationally. Assessment of performance management maturity employs a match between the obstacles expected in the distinct stages of adoption and implementation and the hindrances federal agencies have encountered. Quantitative analysis of data provided by pooled Government Accountability Office surveys of federal managers points to activity at the adoption stage, but not at the implementation stage, calling into question the maturity of the performance initiative.

The purpose of this paper is to recognise the importance of the interplay between performance measurement, performance management, employee engagement and performance. However, the nature of this phenomenon is not well understood. Analysis of the literature reveals two dimensions of organisational control, technical and social, that are used to develop a conceptual framework for studying this phenomenon.

The authors conducted explorative action research involving pilot and control groups from two departments of a UK bank.

The authors show that an intervention on the social controls has led to changes in technical controls of the performance measurement system resulting in significant improvement in employee engagement and performance.

The research was undertaken with two cases from a single organisation. Further fine-grained, longitudinal research is required to fully understand this phenomenon in a wider range of contexts.

The paper contributes to the theory on performance measures and gives guidance on how organisations might design their performance measurement systems to enhance employee engagement and performance.

The study makes three contributions. First, the authors introduce a new theoretical framework based the organisational control theory providing a basis for future research. Second, through nine propositions, the authors establish a causal relationship between performance measurement, performance management, employee engagement and performance. Third, the authors identify a gap in knowledge concerning the design of organisational controls in the context of the process that is being managed.

Much of the literature on citizen participation in the budget process links the council-manager form of government with higher levels of citizen participation, assuming the council-manager form represents professional administration. This is contradictory to the reality that different forms of government have “borrowed” features from each other and many now have mixed forms of government (i.e., adapted). The literature also contains ambiguities about city managers’ role in participatory budgeting. We review the literature and identify three competing theories about the role of professional managers in the budget process. We directly examine the effect of city managers in terms of their professional dimensions, institutional environment, and individual willingness to represent citizens. Using survey data from Florida, we demonstrate that managers’ professionalism, perceived political environment, and attitude toward citizen input are important factors explaining local governments’ adoption of participatory budgeting.

This study uses a budgeting experiment to examine the effects of peer influence and firm earnings position on managerial honesty. In the experiment, participants report production costs to request funds from the firm based on their actual private cost information. The firm’s earnings position is manipulated at two levels, a gain condition and an edge condition, and the authors find that participants overstate costs (i.e., are less honest) to a greater extent in the dishonest peer influence condition than in the honest peer influence condition. The authors also find that the effect of peer influence on managerial honesty is context dependent. Specifically, participants respond to both dishonest and honest peer influence in the gain condition but they do not respond to peer influence in the edge condition. This study provides evidence for honest peer influence on honesty and it highlights the role of earnings position on the effect of peer influence on honesty. Controlling the disclosure of certain peer information is not possible because individuals can learn about peer information (honest or dishonest) formally or informally. Such uncontrollable peer information may be harmful to firms. The results suggest firms that provide managers with the consequences of managerial budgeting on the firm operational outcomes can neutralize the effect of peer influence on managerial honesty when managers’ budgeting decisions significantly affect firm profits.

Traditional agency theory assumes monitoring is good for the principal, but we investigate an unintended effect: diminishment of the agent’s preference for honesty. We hypothesize greater dishonest behavior in a monitored environment than in a non-monitored environment, when the agent has the opportunity to cheat outside the scope of monitoring. Relevant theories to explain such behavior are behavioral agency theory, where trust and reciprocity are thought to alter contractual outcomes, and the fraud-triangle theory, where the ability to rationalize deviant acts affects behavior. We utilize participants who have been acclimated to either a monitored or an unmonitored condition in an immediately preceding experiment and seamlessly continue that treatment. Within each of these conditions, participants perform a simple task with a performance-based monetary reward. Half self-report and can safely cheat, while the other half are verified; the difference between verified and self-reported scores is a proxy for dishonest reporting. As hypothesized, unmonitored individuals reciprocate with honest behavior, while monitored individuals tend toward dishonest behavior when the opportunity arises. Implications for fraud prevention are discussed.