绩效驱动体系中的管理目标：高等教育中的理论与实证测试

在公共管理领域，管理者的目标设定对于组织绩效至关重要。然而，管理者如何在不同压力下设定优先级目标一直是学术界关注的焦点。本文通过对美国大学校长的问卷调查，实证检验了三大理论框架——绩效差距理论、官僚控制理论和同构合理性理论，以分析它们在管理决策中的相对影响力。研究发现，尽管绩效差距和同构行为对决策有一定影响，政治控制机制在管理者的目标设定过程中起到了关键作用。该发现揭示了公共管理者在设定目标时，更倾向于考虑与政治领导的代理关系，而非单纯依据绩效指标或同行行为。

本文不仅为公共管理中的目标设定提供了新的理论支持，还通过对高校这一复杂案例的研究，验证了三种理论的适用性。研究采用了有序logit模型进行数据分析，确保了结论的严谨性与稳健性。文章对公共管理实践具有重要启示，建议未来研究可以进一步探讨不同政治体制下的管理决策差异，并关注外部利益相关者如何影响公共组织的目标设定过程。这一研究为公共管理者提供了新的视角，帮助他们更好地理解如何在复杂的政治环境中平衡绩效目标与政治期望。

In public management, managerial goal setting is critical for organizational performance. However, how managers prioritize goals under different pressures has long been a key topic of scholarly inquiry. This article, based on a survey of university presidents in the United States, empirically tests three prominent theoretical frameworks—performance gaps, bureaucratic control, and isomorphic rationality—to assess their relative influence on managerial decision-making. The findings suggest that, while performance gaps and isomorphic rationality exert some influence, political control mechanisms primarily drive how managers set goals. This implies that public managers tend to prioritize their relationships with political principals over purely responding to performance metrics or emulating peer organizations when setting organizational goals.

This study not only contributes new theoretical insights into goal setting in public management but also validates the applicability of these three theories through the complex context of higher education institutions. Using ordered logit models for data analysis, the research ensures the robustness of its conclusions. The article provides important practical implications for public management, suggesting that future research should further explore variations in managerial decision-making across different political systems and investigate how external stakeholders shape goal-setting processes in public organizations. This research offers public managers a fresh perspective, helping them better understand how to balance performance priorities with political expectations in complex governance environments.

本研究探讨了高等教育中的目标设定，特别是大学校长偏好的影响因素。校长负责设定机构目标，具体实施通常由教务长和院长等执行。高等教育机构变化缓慢且自回归性强，战略调整难以迅速改善绩效（见Cohen和March 1986）。文献指出，变化通常只在边缘发生，中心基本不变（Leslie和Fretwell 1996; Tierney 1998, 1999）。直到最近，大学市场竞争较低，政治控制也较为罕见，管理者在评估优先事项时需要适应这一新环境。

如今，联邦和州政策制定者及管理委员会已建立绩效问责机制，要求机构达到目标才能获得拨款（Rutherford和Rabovsky 2014）。由于信息不对称，高等教育中的委托-代理关系复杂。假设在这些组织中成立，则可能适用于反馈更快、不确定性较低的机构。

随着州支持减少，市场与高等教育的关系日益紧密，促使人们重新讨论其作为公共产品或私人产品的性质（Bowen 1977; Winston 1997）。政策环境变化要求管理者平衡多个竞争目标。例如，校长在提升学位可负担性和教育质量之间面临困境，认为无法同时提升两者的绩效（Rodriguez和Kelly 2014）。高校必须应对竞争加剧、问责政策和需求变化，以证明其对个人和国家的重要性（Slaughter和Rhoades 2004; Altbach等，2011）。

尽管学生人数持续增加，大学管理者仍面临多个竞争目标（Marginson 1997）。他们通过设定与可负担性、质量和问责相关的政策，基于机构历史表现或与同行的比较。例如，校长更关心学费与同行的比较（社会抱负），而非历史学费水平（历史抱负）。另一方面，校长在设定公平目标时，可能更注重过去的入学数据。

本研究结合了政治控制和同构合理性理论。校长向管理委员会汇报，委员会越来越多地影响大学的优先事项（Tandberg 2013; Carver和Carver 2011），并拥有雇佣和解雇校长的权力，能显著影响大学目标的实现。为了验证政治控制假设，需要衡量管理委员会的偏好。

检验同构合理性假设需建立同行群体。理论认为，管理者会模仿成功大学的行为。由于大学目标模糊且管理行动与结果的联系不清晰，校长们倾向于通过模仿其他成功大学来规避风险。这需要校长确定竞争学校，并制定类似的政策和目标。

This study focuses on goal setting within higher education, examining specifically the underlying factors driving the preferences of university presidents. College and university presidents are tasked with setting institutional goals, while the implementation is typically left to provosts and deans. Higher education institutions are highly autoregressive and slow to change, making it difficult for strategic adjustments to quickly alter performance outcomes (see Cohen and March 1986). Literature suggests that changes generally occur at the margins, with the core remaining largely unchanged (Leslie and Fretwell 1996; Tierney 1998, 1999). Additionally, university markets were not particularly competitive, and political control was rare until recent years. Thus, managers now face significant environmental changes that affect how they evaluate priorities.

Currently, federal and state policymakers, along with governing boards, have implemented accountability policies that include performance-based funding mechanisms, requiring institutions to meet performance goals to secure state allocations (Rutherford and Rabovsky 2014). The principal-agent relationship in higher education is further complicated by the information asymmetry advantage that university presidents have over part-time governing boards and state policymakers. If our hypotheses hold in these organizations, they are likely to be robust and generalizable to agencies where markets and hierarchy provide faster feedback and uncertainty is less prevalent.

As state support for higher education decreases, the relationship between markets and universities has become more salient, raising questions about whether higher education is a public provision or a private good (Bowen 1977; Winston 1997). The rapid changes in the policy environment require higher education managers to balance several competing goals. For instance, universities are under pressure to both improve the affordability of degrees and maintain high-quality learning. Presidents argue that achieving higher performance in both goals simultaneously is costly (Rodriguez and Kelly 2014). Institutions must continue to cope with increasing competition, accountability policies, and changing consumer demands to demonstrate that post-secondary degrees are essential for both individual social status and national economic growth (Slaughter and Rhoades 2004; Altbach et al. 2011).

Even as the supply of students increases, university managers face numerous competing goals (Marginson 1997). In setting policies related to affordability, quality, and accountability, university administrators are likely to consider both the institution’s past performance and its performance relative to peers. For example, presidents may be more concerned with how their costs compare to those of peer institutions (social aspirations) than with their own historical costs (historical aspirations). On the other hand, presidents may focus on past performance when developing plans to increase equity, as they base goals on past enrollments at their institution.

This study also incorporates political control and isomorphic rationality. University presidents report to governing boards, which have taken an increasingly active role in setting priorities (Tandberg 2013; see Carver and Carver 2011). As classic agents reporting to political principals, presidents are influenced by governing boards that hold significant power, including the ability to hire and fire presidents. To assess the political control hypothesis, we will need to include a measure of the preferences of the governing board.

Testing the hypothesis of isomorphic rationality requires establishing a peer group. The theory suggests that managers will mimic the behavior of perceived successful institutions. Given that university goals are often vague and the link between management actions and outcomes is not always clear, presidents are likely to seek the safety of isomorphic rationality. To achieve this, the president needs to define a set of peer universities and establish goals and policies similar to those institutions.

本研究的数据来自2008年对美国四年制公立和非营利私立大学校长的调查（n = 1,534），回收率为22%（n = 340），具有代表性。调查内容包括校长的时间分配、管理风格、多样性举措和问责工作。调查结果与IPEDS Analytics: Delta Cost Project数据库相结合，后者提供了1987年至2010年间关于院校注册、财务、人员配置和学生表现的数据。本研究使用2008年的数据，并通过2006-2007年的滞后变量来衡量变化率。

校长被要求对四个目标（公平性、可负担性、质量和问责性）进行优先排序。对应的绩效指标包括：少数族裔学生比例（衡量公平性）、州内学费（衡量可负担性）、六年毕业率（衡量质量）和每学生支出（衡量问责性）。此外，研究还引入了两个关键自变量：历史抱负（机构绩效的滞后变化率）和社会抱负（与同行的绩效比较）。

为衡量政治控制，研究通过管理委员会的优先排序进行评估，同时校长的排序和委员会的排序之间可能存在共同来源偏差，研究通过因子分析进行调整。同构合理性通过计算同行组中优先目标的比例来衡量。控制变量包括机构规模、资源、学生构成以及校长的在职年数等。本文使用有序Logit回归进行分析，并验证了结果的一致性。

The data for this study come from a 2008 survey of U.S. public and private non-profit four-year university presidents (n = 1,534), with a response rate of 22% (n = 340), ensuring representativeness. The survey asked about time allocation, management style, diversity initiatives, and accountability efforts. The survey results were combined with the IPEDS Analytics: Delta Cost Project database, which provides data on institutional enrollment, finance, staffing, and student performance from 1987 to 2010. For this study, 2008 data were used, with lagged variables from 2006 and 2007 to measure changes over time.

Presidents were asked to rank four goals—equity, affordability, quality, and accountability—by priority. Corresponding performance indicators include the percentage of minority students (equity), in-state tuition (affordability), six-year graduation rates (quality), and per-student expenditures (accountability). Additionally, two key independent variables were introduced: historical aspirations (lagged performance change) and social aspirations (performance compared to peers).

To measure political control, the study assessed the priorities of the governing board. Potential common source bias between presidential and board rankings was addressed using factor analysis. Isomorphic rationality was measured by calculating the percentage of peer institutions prioritizing specific goals. Control variables included institutional size, resources, student composition, and presidential tenure. Ordered logit regression was employed for analysis, with consistency verified through additional methods.