分管领导对政府部门绩效的影响研究——以中国某市为例

How Steering-Leaders Affect Municipal Government Agencies’ Performance? Evidence from a City in China

中国市级政府往往采取分管领导负责制,一个副市长通常分管几个甚至数十个市直部门。分管副市长作为部门的上级领导,是否及如何影响部门绩效?依据资源依赖理论和政策网络理论,文章假设部门绩效会受到分管领导的影响。分管领导可能会影响部门的信息、政策和资源汲取,进而影响部门绩效;与此同时,分管领导会通过直接或间接、正式或非正式的方式干预部门绩效考评。文章利用东部某市46个市直部门2013~2017年的面板数据进行实证分析,结果显示分管领导的行政职务、任期和来源等不会显著影响部门绩效考核结果,但是分管领导的性别有显著影响。分管领导对部门绩效的影响微弱,从侧面反映该市政府绩效考核结果的公正性。文章结果丰富了政府部门绩效管理的研究文献,并为政府绩效考核和改进提供了政策建议。

In China, municipal government agencies are often steered by deputy mayors, and it is theoretically interesting and practically imperative to understand to what extent steering-leaders matter in agencies' performance. Deputy mayors are usually responsible for the operations of dozens of agencies, and they are keen in helping these agencies secure resources, strengthen capabilities and become more influential. We expect that the characteristics of steering-leaders will affect agencies' performance in many ways. Specifically, in line with the theories of resource dependence and policy network, we predict that agencies under higher-level, longer-serving and local steering-leaders are more likely to outperform than their peers. We use longitudinal data of 46 municipal agencies of a medium-sized city in southeastern China from 2013 to 2017 to test the hypotheses, and control for conventional agency-level variables, including the attributes of agency heads. The results partially support our expectations, suggesting steering-leaders matter to some extent in agencies' performance. These findings help reveal the operational logic of steering leadership, and generate helpful policy implications for performance management and improvement.