Compared to whom? Social and historical reference points and performance appraisals by managers, students, and the general public

Amanda Rutherford,Megan Darnley,Thomas Rabovsky

doi:10.30636/jbpa.41.149

Amanda Rutherford, Megan Darnley + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.30636/jbpa.41.149

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Abstract

Experimental studies in public administration often focus on samples of non-practitioner groups. In these cases, it is unclear whether findings from non-practitioner groups are generalizable to public managers. Some literature suggests that bureaucrats are likely to hold biases similar to the rest of the population while other research argues that bureaucratic expertise and training allow practitioners to make decisions in more strategic or rational ways. This study works within the literature of performance information to test for differences in responses to the same experiment among college students, citizens, and public managers in the context of U.S. K-12 education. Some differences were detected across groups, though results reveal largely similar findings which have implications for when and how scholars might rely on non-practitioner samples to consider the attitudes and behaviors of bureaucrats or elected policymakers.

Highlights

Experimental studies in public administration often focus on samples of non-practitioner groups
This review found that most experiments were published in the last decade and almost half (33 of 72) focused primarily on survey experiments
The purpose of this study is to test whether public managers are subject to some of the same biases and heuristics as the rest of the population; in this case, we focus on biases stemming from information framing and performance gaps

Summary

Introduction

Experimental studies in public administration often focus on samples of non-practitioner groups. In these cases, it is unclear whether findings from non-practitioner groups are generalizable to public managers. The growth of empirical studies that use some type of experimental methodology in public administration has been charted by multiple scholars These experiments often study questions related to individual-. Ninety percent of the studies were conducted using students while six experiments focused on public managers These assessments of the literature illustrate that few experimental studies have been conducted on public sector workers (Roberts & Wenstedt, 2019; but see Andersen, 2017 and Bellé, 2013a). It may be the case that biases and heuristics are observed consistently across groups, as all people are required to make decisions and possess the same type of information processing system

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