Performance Evaluation, Influence Activities, and Bureaucratic Work Behavior: Evidence from China

Alain de Janvry (), Guojun He, Elisabeth Sadoulet (), Shaoda Wang and Qiong Zhang

Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series from Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley

Abstract: Subjective performance evaluation is widely used by firms and governments toprovide work incentives. However, delegating evaluation power to local seniorleadership could induce influence activities: agents might devote much effortsto please their supervisors, rather than focusing on productive tasks that benefittheir organizations. We conduct a large-scale randomized field experimentamong Chinese local government employees and provide the first rigorousempirical evidence on the existence and implications of influence activities. Wefind that employees do engage in evaluator-specific influence to affectevaluation outcomes, and that this process can be partly observed by their coworkers.However, introducing uncertainty in the identity of the evaluatordiscourages evaluator-specific influence activities and significantly improves thework performance of local government employees.

Keywords: Social and Behavioral Sciences; influence activities; subjective evaluation; civil servants; work performance; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-10-21
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-exp and nep-hrm
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Working Paper: Performance Evaluation, Influence Activities, and Bureaucratic Work Behavior: Evidence from China (2020)
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