Behavioral theory states that decision-makers engage in search in response to a performance shortfall. However, public administration research has remained remarkably inattentive of decision-makers’ attention. This study conceptually disentangles problem-defining and solution-generation as two distinct search objectives, in order to test theoretical expectations concerning individual decision-makers’ search in response to negative performance. Using a survey experiment among 1562 political and managerial public sector decision-makers across 263 local government organizations that links factual performance feedback about budgetary performance and citizen satisfaction to a behavioral measure of both search objectives, the study finds increased solution-generation search in response to negative budgetary performance feedback, but not in response to low citizen satisfaction. Search of politicians and managers is found to be highly similar. These findings contribute to a behavioral understanding of how performance information influences search by politicians and managers, and reveal novel research avenues about information-processing that are of particular relevance to public administration research and theory.

中文翻译：

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搜索以响应负面绩效反馈：问题定义和解决方案生成

行为理论指出，决策者参与搜索是为了应对绩效不足。然而，公共行政研究一直没有引起决策者的注意。本研究在概念上将问题定义和解决方案生成作为两个不同的搜索目标分开，以测试有关个人决策者搜索的理论期望以响应负面绩效。该研究使用对 263 个地方政府组织的 1562 名政治和管理公共部门决策者进行的一项调查实验，将有关预算绩效和公民满意度的事实绩效反馈与两个搜索目标的行为测量联系起来，该研究发现增加了解决方案生成搜索以响应负预算绩效反馈，但不是为了应对低公民满意度。发现政治家和经理的搜索高度相似。这些发现有助于对绩效信息如何影响政治家和管理者的搜索的行为理解，并揭示与公共行政研究和理论特别相关的信息处理的新研究途径。