Open Information Policy Research Articles

Vertical Pay Dispersion, Peer Observability, and Misreporting in a Participative Budgeting Setting

ABSTRACTIn this study, we examine the joint effect of vertical pay dispersion and peer observability on subordinates' misreporting choices. We adopt a participative budgeting setting in which two subordinates report to one superior, and we manipulate vertical pay dispersion (low/high) and peer observability (absent/present). Subordinates have private information about actual project costs and can over‐report project costs to the superior without detection and thus create budgetary slack. When a peer's reporting choices are observable, we predict and find that peer reporting choices have an asymmetric influence on the focal subordinates' reporting choices, and this asymmetric influence depends on the level of vertical pay dispersion. Specifically, we find that when vertical pay dispersion is low, subordinates who observe peer reports containing low slack misreport less, whereas observing peer reports that contain high slack has no significant effect. However, when vertical pay dispersion is high, subordinates who observe peer reports containing high slack misreport more, whereas observing peer reports that contain low slack has no significant effect. Driven by these asymmetric effects, subordinates misreport less in the presence of peer observability than in its absence when vertical pay dispersion is low and misreport more in the presence of peer observability than in its absence when vertical pay dispersion is high. Overall, our findings suggest that when a firm has a more egalitarian pay structure (i.e., low vertical pay dispersion), an open information policy is conducive to a more honest reporting environment, whereas under a more hierarchical pay structure (i.e., high vertical pay dispersion), open information policies can compromise the honesty of subordinates' reports.

Spatial Intelligence for Regional Analysis

With the announcement of open information policy by the Chinese government, there has been lots of development in government statistics, Census data, and GIS data. That information provides rich reference for regional analysis in China. The primary challenges under rapid data growth include how to efficiently integrate those space-time data, provide methodology for different research targets, and promote their applications in different fields. This report will present some recent developments of spatial intelligence technologies for spatial data integration, data analysis, as well as their applications. The report will introduce the newly developed spatial explorer (China Geo-Explorer) as a joint effort by the University of Michigan China Data Center and Wuhan University. It will demonstrate how space-time data of different formats and sources can be integrated, visualized, analyzed and reported in a web based system. Some applications in disaster assessment, environment and health, cultural and religious studies will be discussed for China and global studies.

How Control System Design Influences Performance Misreporting

ABSTRACTThis paper investigates reporting honesty when managers have monetary incentives to overstate their performance. We argue that managers who report about their performance will take into account how their report affects their peers (i.e., other managers at the same hierarchical level). This effect depends on the design of the organization's control system, in particular, on the reward structure and the information policy regarding individual performance reports. The reward structure determines if peers’ monetary payoff is increased or decreased when managers claim a higher level of performance. The information policy determines if managers will be able to link individual peers to their reports and affects the nonmonetary costs of breaking social norms. We present the results of a laboratory experiment. As predicted, we find that participants are more likely to overstate their performance if this increases the monetary payoff of others than if their reported performance decreases others’ monetary gains. In addition, overstatements are lower under an open information policy, where each individual's reported performance is made public, compared to a closed information policy, where participants only learn the average performance of the other participants. Our findings have several important implications for management accounting research and practice.

How Control System Design Influences Performance Misreporting

This paper investigates reporting honesty when managers have monetary incentives to overstate their performance. We argue that managers who report about their performance will take into account how their report affects their peers (i.e., other managers at the same hierarchical level). This effect depends on the design of the organization’s control system, in particular on the reward structure and the information policy regarding individual performance reports. The reward structure determines if peers’ monetary payoff is increased or decreased when managers claim a higher level of performance. The information policy determines if managers will be able to link individual peers to their reports and affects the non-monetary costs of breaking social norms. We present the results of a laboratory experiment. As predicted, we find that participants are more likely to overstate their performance if this increases the monetary payoff of others than if their reported performance decreases others’ monetary gains. In addition, overstatements are lower under an open information policy, where each individual’s reported performance is made public, compared to a closed information policy where participants only learn the average performance of the other participants. Our findings have several important implications for management accounting research and practice.

Open Information Policy for Student Research in Law Universities

This paper examines the need for and feasibility of adopting an Open Information Policy for student-research in the National Law Universities in India. India is currently in the midst of a communications revolution. Current statistics reveal that as many as 40 to 60 million Indians are active users of the Internet. Viewed as a percentage of the population this is a meagre 4 to 6 per cent. However, this is close to the total number of university graduates in India (48.7 million), and is adding users at a much higher rate than the number of new graduates every year (2.5 million). One of the possibilities that this per-capita increase in access to ICT promises is to place tools of self-learning at the disposal of scores of Indians who have been edged out of the formal channels by the highly competitive education system.This paper sees legal research by students in publicly funded universities as a valuable education resource in this context.

Crisis Management in an Authoritarian Regime: Media Effects During the Sichuan Earthquake

Abstract Exogenous shocks are said to play a key role in the breakdown of authoritarian regimes. This paper sheds light on the conditions under which crisis management play out to the advantage of authoritarian leaders, or not. By chance, a national probability survey of the Chinese population was conducted before and after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Based on a quasi-experimental design that allows us to match pre- and post-quake respondents, we find that citizens were highly responsive to media content. In the short run, a more open information policy helped shore up support for a government that exhibited a high degree of responsiveness to the crisis. We find, however, that this approach may have undermined the regime’s legitimacy. Whereas in the immediate aftermath of the quake the Chinese media emphasized political unity and harmony, over time increasing and unusual media criticisms of local governments in the media eroded public confidence. Even though support for political unity and harmony increased immediately after the quake, it quickly dropped below pre-quake levels. Our results are robust both to matching and to more standard parametric specifications.

Are We Giving Away Our Science and Technology?

Does an open information policy pay off, or does it simply give away technicaland scientific advantages of a country? Strong philosophical arguments canbe marshalled on either side. Here, for what may be the first time, the authoroffers empirical evidence that an open information policy pays off inconcrete rewards of information.

Government aims at open information policy

Government aims at open information policy