Does evidence help politicians make informed decisions even if it is at odds with their prior beliefs? And does providing more evidence increase the likelihood that politicians will be enlightened by the information? Based on the literature on motivated political reasoning and the theory about affective tipping points, this article hypothesizes that politicians tend to reject evidence that contradicts their prior attitudes, but that increasing the amount of evidence will reduce the impact of prior attitudes and strengthen their ability to interpret the information correctly. These hypotheses are examined using randomized survey experiments with responses from 954 Danish politicians, and results from this sample are compared to responses from similar survey experiments with Danish citizens. The experimental findings strongly support the hypothesis that politicians are biased by prior attitudes when interpreting information. However, in contrast to expectations, the findings show that the impact of prior attitudes increases when more evidence is provided.

Performance data allows politicians to exert accountability over public organizations, even as ideological biases can affect how they interpret such data. However, we know little about how motivated decision-makers prioritize goals when facing multiple pieces of contradictory performance data that reflect the competing goals of public services. Such goal conflict is an inherent aspect of public management. To understand its implications for the use of performance data use we develop a theory of goal reprioritization. We start by assuming that elected officials have preferences between specific policy goals, and about governance processessuch as a preference for public or private service provision. When elected officials face contradictory pieces of performance data, governance preferences drive performance evaluations to the point that they are willing to reweight their goal preferences to minimize cognitive dissonance. We offer experimental evidence of this process, showing that elected officials asked to evaluate school performance reprioritize between two distinct policy goals for schoolstest scores and student well-beingto fit with their governance preferences. Reprioritization is an attractive strategy since it allows elected officials to claim they are using performance data, even as underlying governance preferences lead them to set aside the evaluative goal-based criteria by which they would otherwise make performance evaluations. In other words, preferences concerning the nature of government can trump goal preferences when decision-makers use performance data.

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Frontline employees cope with high workloads and limited resources by directing their work attention and efforts toward particular clients. Yet, the role of client attributes in frontline employees’ efforts to help clients remains undertheorized and empirically understudied. Using a survey experimental vignette design (2 × 2 factorial) among 1,595 Danish caseworkers, the authors of this article provide new knowledge on how two generic nondemographic client attributes—competence and motivation—shape frontline employees’ willingness to help their clients. We found that both the competence and motivation of clients affect caseworkers’ willingness to exert extra time and effort helping clients. Specifically, caseworkers are most willing to help a client appearing both competent and motivated. Moreover, our data suggests that client motivation is more important than client competence for caseworkers’ willingness to help. We end the article with a discussion of policy implications and directions for future research.

The marketing advice published in professional accounting journals is compared with empirical research on client priorities and accountants′ marketing practices to date. The advice and client literature are found to be consistent in that both emphasise referrals, personal communications, practice specialisations and good working relationships. Accountants themselves also emphasised personal communication methods and referrals, although large firms tended to be more systematic and sophisticated in the practice of advertising and public relations. There is less empirical evidence on accountants′ marketing practices beyond their promotional activities. There seems to be little use of formal market research and limited authority given to those with marketing responsibility. It is concluded that both accountants and researchers should focus their attention on the ways in which the whole services marketing mix is used within the profession.

This article argues and shows that performance narratives affect how and for what purposes managers use performance information independently of other known drivers of performance information use, such as the external environment and individual intra-and interorganizational characteristics. Using a survey experiment on 514 Danish public school managers, we find an asymmetrical effect of "decline narratives" (declining performance) and "increase narratives" (improving performance). In line with expectations drawing on literature on negativity bias and blame-avoidance, we find that "decline narratives" lead to higher internal use (learning and control purposes) of performance information. In contrast, "increase narratives" lead to higher external use (giving account and building support purposes) of performance information. Further exploratory analysis suggests that internal use is not affected by narratives when managers are skeptical of the performance measure. More skeptical managers are, however, willing to use performance information with an "increase narrative" for external use.

Research has demonstrated how policy changes are bound to fail without the support of frontline employees. This study examines how performance information influences frontline employees’ support for managerial policy initiatives. We develop hypotheses stating that the exposure to positive and negative organizational performance scores compared to average scores increases frontline employees’ support for managerial policy initiatives and thus facilitate policy change. To test our hypotheses, we conduct a survey experiment on more than 1,500 social caseworkers working in Danish employment agencies. The results show that while the provision of positive organizational scores increases caseworkers’ support for managerial policy initiatives, there is no direct effect following the exposure of negative performance scores. However, additional exploratory analysis reveals that the caseworkers’ experienced work pressure moderates the effect of positive and negative performance information. Specifically, caseworkers that experience a high work pressure are more inclined to support managerial policy initiatives following positive and negative performance scores. Furthermore, the explorative analysis indicates that the caseworkers tend to ignore negative performance information, which strongly suggests that poor performance scores trigger identity-protective cognition. Overall, the study advances our understanding of the link between performance information and support of policy changes on the frontline of public services by showing how different performance scores influence employees’ support for managerial policy initiatives.