Alleviating or aggravating? How patronage ties moderate the impacts of performance feedback on data manipulation in public performance management
研究绩效反馈如何影响公共组织的数据操纵行为，并发现人情关系会减弱负面反馈的加剧作用，同时削弱正面反馈的抑制作用，基于中国城市空气质量排名数据。
This research investigates how performance feedback affects public organizations’ data manipulation behaviours and, more importantly, how patronage ties moderate the impacts. We theorize that negative performance feedback (NPF) increases data manipulation, while positive performance feedback (PPF) reduces it. More crucially, the moderating roles of patronage ties are contingent on the type of performance feedback: they attenuate the impact of NPF on intensifying public organizations’ inclination to resort to data manipulation, while diminishing the impact of PPF on dampening the inclination. Empirical analyses using the case of China’s official city air quality ranking provide robust evidence supporting these theoretical predictions.