第三方评估提升政府绩效的理论框架与研究展望

Theoretical Framework and Research Prospect of the Third-Party Evaluation Improving Organizational Performance

第三方评估在项目评审、绩效考核和政策评估等领域得到越来越广泛的使用,但第三方评估能否切实提升政府绩效以及通过哪些途径,在何种情况下会改进绩效,这些问题尚未得到系统研究。通过构建一个整合性的理论框架,并提出绩效反馈、绩效问责、组织学习和组织创新等中介变量,来解释第三方评估影响政府绩效的作用机制。将评估目的、评估参与、评估支持和评估使用等视为左右第三方评估奏效程度的自变量和调节变量,解释其在何种条件下会提升政府绩效。未来的实证研究可以各级政府的财政支出绩效评估、精准扶贫项目评估和经济政策评估等为研究对象,考察第三方评估对政府绩效的影响过程与依存条件。

Third-party evaluation（TPE）has been ubiquitously used in program assessment,performance measurement,and policy evaluation,but we know little about whether it is a symbolic instrument for rhetoric purpose or an administrative innovation to improve performance.Can TPE improve the government performance,and through which channels and in what conditions？This proposed project aims to develop an integrated theoretical framework,in which performance feedback,accountability,organizational learning and innovation mediate the relationship between TPE and performance improvement are put forward,explaining the function of the third-party evaluation.The evaluation purposes,evaluation participation,evaluation support and evaluation use play moderating roles.We suggest future studies to empirically test the hypotheses in the context of budgetary performance assessment,targeted poverty alleviation and economic policy evaluation in the local governments in China,which helps deepen our understanding of performance implications of TPE.