Target Interactions and Target Aspiration Level Adaptation: How Do Government Leaders Tackle the “Environment‐Economy” Nexus?

• Published date: 01 March 2021
• Author: Pan Zhang
• Date: 01 March 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13184

220 Public Administration Review • March | Apri l 202 1

Research Article

Abstract: How do local governments set performance targets under multi-task conditions? This article builds

a theoretical linkage between environmental targets and gross domestic product (GDP) growth goals in China.

Treating environmental protection and economic development as competitive tasks in China, the author argues

that environmental targets constrain GDP growth goals and that this negative relationship is weakened by relative

pollutant emission efficiency. The article empirically examines these theoretical hypotheses using a panel data set of

sulfur dioxide emission reduction targets and GDP growth goals across Chinese provinces. The statistical findings

support these arguments and help elucidate the “black box” of decision-making in the public sector.

Evidence for Practice

• High pollutant emission reduction pressure can lower provincial leaders’ expectations of economic growth in

China.

• The improvement in pollutant emission efficiency weakens the constraint of pollutant emission reduction

pressure on expectations of economic growth.

• Government leaders should improve pollutant emission efficiency to achieve a win-win situation for

economic growth and pollution control.

Goal or target setting occurs at every level of

society: individuals set task performance goals

(Latham, Borgogni, and Petitta 2008; Locke

and Latham 2002), private organizations set for-profit

goals (Lant 1992; Mezias, Chen, and Murphy 2002),

and public organizations set nonprofit goals (Gao 2009;

Kelman and Friedman 2009; Ma 2016). Goals or targets

play important roles in performance improvement

through directing, energizing, and strategy-arousal

functions (Boyne and Chen 2007; Holm 2017; Kelman

and Friedman 2009; Locke and Latham 2002; Zhang

and Wu 2018a). In addition, goal or target setting, which

is a component of strategic planning (George, Walker,

and Monster 2019) and one of the most important

forms of decision-making in organizational management

(Meier, Favero, and Zhu 2015), provides a window

through which we can peer into the “black box” of

organizational decision-making. Despite the importance

of goals and the prevalence of goal setting, few scholars

have explored the factors determining organizational

performance goal aspiration levels (Ma 2016; Zhang

and Wu 2018b). This research gap leads directly to a

critical question: how do organizations set their own

performance goal aspiration levels?

Current research on the antecedents of organizational

goal aspiration levels can be divided into two clusters.

The first cluster, especially research based on the

behavioral theory of the firm (Cyert and March

1992) and the Bayesian decision theory of managerial

action (Meier, Favero, and Zhu 2015), argues that

organizational goal setting is an incremental process of

adaptation. In the historical dimension, some studies

in this stream claim that an organization’s level of

performance goal aspiration is correlated not only

with its historical goal aspiration level, both in the

private sector (Lant 1992; Mezias, Chen, and Murphy

2002) and in the public sector (Ma 2016; Zhang and

Wu 2018b), but also with its prior performance (Ma

2016; Zhang and Wu 2018b) or goal attainment

discrepancy, measured by the difference between its

prior performance and prior goal aspiration level

(Ma 2016; Mezias, Chen, and Murphy 2002). In

the horizontal dimension, an organization’s goal

aspiration levels or goal priorities are influenced by

the goal aspiration levels or goal priorities of its peer

counterparts (Ma 2016; Nielsen 2014). Vertically,

organizations are said to set their goal aspiration levels

and goal priorities according to the preferences of

superiors (Meier, Favero, and Zhu 2015; Rutherford

and Meier 2015).

The second cluster of research on the antecedents of

organizational goal aspiration levels focuses on the

Pan Zhang

Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Target Interactions and Target Aspiration Level

Adaptation:How Do Government Leaders Tackle the

“Environment-Economy” Nexus?

Pan Zhang is assistant professor in the

School of International and Public Affairs

and China Institute for Urban Governance

at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His

interests include environmental governance,

performance management, and policy

processes.

Email: zhang_pan@sjtu.edu.cn

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 81, Iss. 2, pp. 220–230. © 2020 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13184.