Poster #97 - Source of Performance Information and Employees’ Support for Telework Policy–Survey Experiments from Hong Kong and US

• In Event: Friday Poster Reception

Abstract

After the pandemic, government agencies worldwide has been faced with the decision on what kind of remote work/telework policy they should adopt. This study exams how source of performance information can affect employees' support for remote work/telework policy changes using experimental data from Hong Kong and the US. Public managers respond to changes in performance data by introducing policy changes to counter areas of poor performance or to further improve areas of high performance (Meier, Favero, and Zhu 2015). These policy changes need the support of frontline employees to be successful. Recent research finds experimental evidence that public employees are more likely to support policy initiatives if they are exposed to positive performance information (Petersen, 2020) and research in government-citizen interaction has shown that dimensions and source of performance information also matter when we present the information (Walker at al., 2018). There is little evidence in the literature on whether source of performance information affects public employees' support for organizational policy initiatives. Our study bridges this gap by testing the effects of two sources of performance information – citizens (external) and public managers (internal) on employees' support for telework/remote working policy changes. We hypothesize that employees are more likely to support telework policy change if given positive performance information and if the performance information is internal. Using data from 1500 public sector employees from Hong Kong and the United States, we test our hypotheses using survey experiments and found preliminary support for our hypotheses. The study bridges the gap in the performance information use literature by offering evidence on whether source of performance information affects public employees' support for organizational policy initiatives. Offering comparative evidence using data from Asia and the US, this study can help public managers worldwide communicate and implement telework policies more successfully.

Author

• Roger Qiyuan Jin, California State University, Dominguez Hills
  Presenting Author