Roles of Fairness in the Relationship between Performance Evaluation Systems and Budget Gaming Behavior

Abstract

Budget gaming is still an unsolved problem and requires a serious handling. The purpose of this study is to investigate if the perceptions of procedural fairness mediate the relationships between performance evaluation systems and budget gaming behavior. The survey was conducted on go public manufacturing companies in Indonesia with a division manager as a unit of analysis. A total of 128 samples were analyzed using Partial Least Square WarpPLS 3.0. The results show that procedural fairness significantly mediates the relation between non-financial measure and budget gaming. However, procedural fairness does not mediate the relationship between relative performance evaluation and budget gaming. This study supports goal setting theory, agency theory, and organizational justice theory which provide practical implications in terms of overcoming budget gaming through the use of non-financial performance measures.