Unlocking politicians’ potential : the motivational mechanisms underlying performance information use and voice behavior

The purposeful use of performance information is considered an important behavior for politicians in governing boards because it can stimulate debate by facilitating the sharing of different viewpoints in a constructive manner. Such voice behavior can foster better informed decisions and shared understanding. Despite this presumed importance of both purposeful use of performance information and voice behavior, little is known about their actual drivers. To address this omission, we build on motivated information processing theory to test an integrative model that includes a person based and situation based pathway to analyze the determinants of politicians’ purposeful use of performance information and voice using data from 520 politicians populating the governing boards of 246 Flemish local authorities. Results indicate that both paths are relevant, but the person based pathway has the strongest impact.

Publication year:2019

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