Zone of Acceptance under Performance Measurement: Does Performance Information Affect Employee Acceptance of Management Authority?

• Date: 01 September 2018
• Author: Poul Aaes Nielsen,Christian Bøtcher Jacobsen
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12947
• Published date: 01 September 2018

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 78, Iss. 5, pp. 684–693. © 2018 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12947.

684 Public Administration Review • Septem ber | Octo ber 20 18

Christian Bøtcher Jacobsen is

associate professor in the Department

of Political Science, Aarhus University,

Denmark. His research focuses on

management, leadership, motivation, and

performance in the public sector.

E-mail: christianj@ps.au.dk

Poul Aaes Nielsen is associate

professor in the Department of Political

Science and Public Management at the

University of Southern Denmark. His

research examines the role of performance

management systems in politics and public

management and focuses on topics such

as performance budgeting, responsibility

attribution, and organizational learning.

E-mail: aaes@sam.sdu.dk

Zone of Acceptance under Performance Measurement:

Does Performance Information Affect Employee Acceptance

of Management Authority?

Poul Aaes Nielsen

University of Southern Denmark

Christian Bøtcher Jacobsen

Aarhus University

Abstract: Public sector employees have traditionally enjoyed substantial influence and bargaining power in

organizational decision making, but few studies have investigated the formation of employee acceptance of

management authority. Drawing on the “romance of leadership” perspective, the authors argue that performance

information shapes employee attributions of leader quality and perceptions of a need for change in ways that affect

their acceptance of management authority, conceptualized using Simon’s notion of a “zone of acceptance.” A survey

experiment was conducted among 1,740 teachers, randomly assigning true performance information about each

respondent’s own school. When employees were exposed to signals showing low or high performance, their acceptance of

management authority increased, whereas average performance signals reduced employee acceptance of management

authority. The findings suggest that performance measurement can alter public sector authority relations and have

implications regarding how public managers can use performance information strategically to gain acceptance of

management authority and organizational change.

Evidence for Practice

• Disclosing information about organizational performance affects employee acceptance of management

authority.

• Low and high performance signals can be used strategically by public managers to gain acceptance of

organizational changes.

• Management should adapt its communication about current performance levels depending on how well the

organization performs.

Performance measurement has become

increasingly widespread, and performance

reforms arguably represent the greatest change

in governance in recent decades (Moynihan 2008).

Accordingly, a considerable body of research has

examined how performance information affects

the behavior of public managers (Meier, Favero,

and Zhu 2015; Nielsen 2014a), elected political

representatives (e.g., Nielsen and Moynihan 2017a),

and citizens (e.g., James 2011). However, we know

much less about how frontline employees react to

performance information. Existing research has

focused predominantly on how employees are affected

by being measured, whereas less attention has been

devoted to investigating how public employees

process and respond to the actual performance

data produced by these measurement systems.

Yet employee responses to the data have become

increasingly important as performance information is

widely disseminated to users and the broader public

and as public sector employees are asked to integrate

performance data into their own decision making

(Destler 2017).

In public organizations, civil service protections

and high levels of unionization have traditionally

offered employees greater influence and bargaining

power vis-à-vis management than their private sector

counterparts (Chubb and Moe 1990). Performance-

based accountability pressures could challenge the

position of public employees, particularly in low-

performing organizations, but we argue that the

dissemination of performance information can also

affect employee perceptions of their leaders and

the role of management more directly. Particularly,

we examine how performance information affects

employee acceptance of management authority.

The article’s first contribution is to draw on

psychological insights into leadership attribution

(e.g., Bligh, Kohles, and Pillai 2011) to examine

how performance information affects public sector

employees’ assessments of their leader and their

acceptance of management authority. Central to this

“romance of leadership” perspective is that follower

perceptions of leader influence, behavior, and quality

do not always reflect actual leadership behavior and

Research Article