Bureaucratic shirking is a severe and notorious problem in governments. It exerts a pernicious impact on effective governance and prohibits governments from developing prompt and necessary responses to public needs. In China, the intensification of the anti-corruption campaign since the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2012 has seemingly caused public officials, especially leading cadres, to become risk averse and to shirk responsibilities for fear of making mistakes and being implicated in corruption investigations.Footnote 1 The common strategies of bureaucratic shirking include, but are not limited to, stalling, idling, buck-passing and playing it safe when carrying out public duties. In recent years, the shirking phenomenon has attracted the attention of China's top leaders, who consider it “another form of corruption.”Footnote 2 The central government has promulgated many rules and regulations to tighten sanction-based accountability in order to crack down on bureaucratic shirking.
Sanction-based accountability connotes intensive monitoring of bureaucratic behaviour and practices and the application of punishments when performance criteria are not met.Footnote 3 The campaign to tighten accountability was first launched by the central government to strengthen disciplinary punishment of leading cadres to inhibit the spread of shirking and undesirable work styles. As the Chinese bureaucratic system is characterized by institutional isomorphism across government levels, accountability and blame are usually transferred quickly downward through the hierarchy.Footnote 4 Consequently, sanction-based accountability has become a typical control mechanism for upper-level authorities to regulate lower-level officials down the hierarchical chain of the Chinese bureaucracy. Not only leading cadres but also lower-level civil servants face accountability pressure concerning their public duties.Footnote 5 Central surveillance over local officials is carried out by hard steering, close monitoring, intensified inspection and considerable interference, and sanctions take disciplinary or legal forms if behavioural deviations are detected.Footnote 6 A growing number of public officials have received disciplinary and/or judicial sanctions for their failure to shoulder responsibilities since 2012. For example, in 2015, 2,537 public officials in Henan province received Party or administrative disciplinary penalties because of shirking.Footnote 7 Yunnan province held 2,869 civil servants accountable for their administrative nonfeasance from January to August 2018.Footnote 8
Is sanction-based accountability a cure for bureaucratic shirking? How do public officials respond to increased accountability pressure? We address these questions by drawing on an original survey of bureaucratic shirking conducted among Chinese civil servants in 2019. There is a dearth of studies on the shirking problem in China as a whole and particularly on its causes and characteristics relating to the increasing accountability pressure. This study seeks to fill the gap by making two contributions to the scholarly literature. First, it unpacks the concept of bureaucratic shirking by identifying its major patterns and behavioural correlates. Second, based on empirical findings, the study argues that intensive monitoring and punishment do not necessarily increase effectiveness and efficiency in government and could in fact have a detrimental effect. Sanction-based accountability deters the most obvious and notorious shirking practices, but public officials may develop coping strategies by engaging in more subtle forms of shirking to protect themselves from being caught.
Bureaucratic Shirking: Patterns and Characteristics
The term “shirking” was originally defined by the management literature as a tendency for workers to supply less effort in work in order to create more leisure time for a given wage.Footnote 9 It was then introduced by agency theory to describe public servants who, as rational-economic beings, sought to minimize personal effort and maximize self-interest.Footnote 10 Exterior control mechanisms such as monitoring by upper-level authorities to curb bureaucratic shirking at lower levels are thus considered necessary.Footnote 11 However, an increasing number of studies take issue with agency theory's account of bureaucrats and instead emphasize bureaucrats’ policy preferences and professionalism.Footnote 12 John Brehm and Scott Gates, for example, argue that although bureaucrats may minimize the amount of effort they put into work, whether they shirk or work depends more on their preference for a particular policy or on peer pressure than on supervision intensity.Footnote 13
In this study, we define shirking as a bureaucratic behaviour that intentionally minimizes the effort expended in performing public responsibilities to satisfy personal interests. Shirking is a complicated and multifaceted phenomenon and takes different forms. To find its patterns and characteristics, we collected 432 shirking cases reported by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) on its website from 2012 to 2019. These cases were identified by searching three terms that have been officially used to describe shirking in China: buzuowei 不作为, weiguan buwei 为官不为 and lanzheng 懒政. The CCDI's website is the most authoritative source reporting shirking cases in China and has regularly publicized cases collected nationwide since 2012. The broad coverage and considerable diversity of the CCDI-reported cases allow us to pinpoint the major patterns of bureaucratic shirking.
Based on a content analysis of the 432 cases, we identify six major types of shirking: buck-passing, bluffing, playing it safe, stalling and inaction, idling, and negligence, which can be further grouped into three core categories, namely shifting responsibility, reframing responsibility, and evading responsibility.Footnote 14 Most of the cases display only one type of strategy. Only a few cases involve two types, and we classify them into both categories.
Shifting responsibility refers to the way in which bureaucrats pass the buck or responsibility to others, such as their colleagues, superiors, subordinates or other departments.Footnote 15 It is a typical strategy used by public officials in China to shift workloads or the implementation of unpopular policies to others. The complicated structure of lines-and-blocks (tiaotiao kuaikuai 条条块块), with its five-tier hierarchy and fragmentation of functional authority, blurs the boundaries of responsibilities and makes it possible for officials to shift responsibility upwards, downward or horizontally.Footnote 16 It is common for higher-level authorities to shift heavy workloads and thorny duties to lower-level officials by forcing them to sign excessive responsibility contracts, thereby placing grassroots officials under tremendous working pressure.Footnote 17 However, lower-level officials have also learned to push responsibilities up to higher levels by involving their superiors in tough decision making and by repeatedly reporting their work progress to superiors to avoid making decisions and bearing liability.Footnote 18 A widespread tacit practice of passing the buck involves making whoever signs a document responsible for what happens in relation to it afterwards (shei qianming shei fuze 谁签名,谁负责). As a result, “smart” officials often avoid signing documents or try to obtain multiple signatures on a document to blur and disperse responsibility.Footnote 19
Reframing responsibility refers to the way in which bureaucrats distort their responsibilities to make them less stressful and risky or easier to implement. Typically, such bureaucrats employ two different strategies: playing it safe and bluffing. Scholars believe that the recently imposed strict surveillance of local officials and stringent punishments for their administrative errors are creating a risky political environment in China.Footnote 20 Intensified anti-corruption enforcement has shifted the mentality of many Chinese officials from credit seeking to blame avoidance. To play it safe, for example, some officials try to stay away from innovative and risky tasks, and others simply follow common practices wherever possible to avoid making mistakes, or else they rigidify regulations to hide behind rules. But still some officials try to bluff their way out of accountability pressure. They play tricks to create a false image of success in meeting targets and often deal with increased top-down evaluations by beautifying paperwork, making up statistics and exaggerating accomplishments.Footnote 21
Evading responsibility refers to the practice whereby bureaucrats are completely unwilling to shoulder responsibility and flagrantly display their proclivity for inaction by stalling, idling at work or working carelessly. It is suggested that employees are more likely to evade responsibility when they believe that they can create more leisure time without facing punishment.Footnote 22 Evading responsibility was quite common within the Chinese bureaucracy before 2012, when accountability was relatively lax, and manifested in absenteeism, late arrivals and early departures, and playing cards and mahjong games during work time. Numerous cases of that nature were uncovered and punished after the intensification of accountability.Footnote 23 Consequently, such flagrant evasions of responsibility have been significantly reduced. In comparison with the other two types of shirking (shifting responsibility and reframing responsibility), evading responsibility is easier to detect. This explains why the number of officially reported cases of evading responsibility is substantially larger than the numbers of reported cases of shifting and reframing responsibility. Table 1 summarizes the patterns and characteristics of the three types of shirking.
Table 1: Classification of Shirking Behaviour
Sanction-based Accountability against Shirking
Accountability is widely considered to be an effective tool to regulate and control administrative behaviour.Footnote 24 It refers to a specific social relationship or mechanism that requires public agents to explain and justify their conduct and subjects them to sanctions if poor performance is detected.Footnote 25 The concept of accountability is often related to positive connotation and good governance and is considered a valid measure to ensure that discretionary power is exercised legally and effectively by bureaucrats.Footnote 26 Scholars argue that oversight plays an essential role in curbing abuses of power and maintaining the appropriate conduct of public officials, who will comply with work procedures and fulfil their responsibilities more faithfully if they know that they are being closely monitored.Footnote 27 Accountability is synonymous with punishment in some governments, where opportunities for equal dialogue between higher-level authorities and subordinates and for reward-based consequences are absent.Footnote 28
In China, sanction-based accountability has been increasingly adopted to regulate public officials since 2012. It is reported that the central government issued or amended more than 50 inner-Party disciplinary regulations in the five years after the 18th National Congress of the CCP.Footnote 29 In 2016, two significant regulations on supervision and accountability of public officials were amended. The first, the “Regulations of the Chinese Communist Party on inner-Party supervision (Zhongguo gongchandang dangnei jiandu tiaoli 中国共产党党内监督条例), emphasizes the CCP's central leadership in fighting corruption and the centralization of supervision power through the discipline inspection system. The other document, the “Regulations of the Chinese Communist Party on accountability” (Zhongguo gongchandang wenze tiaoli 中国共产党问责条例), stipulates that any negligence must be denounced and subject to strict punishment.
Some long-standing control mechanisms, such as public budgeting and auditing, cadre responsibility contracts, inspections, performance appraisals and codes of conduct, have been further strengthened at every level of the government to hold local officials accountable. New mechanisms have also been added. Stationing (jinzhu 进驻) and inspection tours (xuncha 巡查), for example, have been launched by the CCDI as two major supervision measures to achieve full coverage of top-down inspection across all levels of the government, Party units, state organs, universities and state-owned enterprises.Footnote 30 During the five years from 2013 to 2017, the central government conducted 12 rounds of inspections over 277 essential Party organizations.Footnote 31
Local commissions of discipline inspection (CDIs) at each level have also dispatched their own inspection teams or inspectors to monitor the Party and government organs at the same level and lower-level organizations. In interviews with township officials conducted by correspondents of China Comment (Banyuetan 半月谈), a town Party secretary complained that in 2018 alone, his office spent 200 days on preparing for various inspections from upper-level authorities and accompanying the inspection teams during their checking-up visits.Footnote 32 A township official in an eastern province received more than 50 inspections within six months in 2018.Footnote 33 Some local CDIs even regard a higher number of disciplinary sanction cases in their localities as an achievement with which to impress their superiors. The punishment of officials’ unsatisfactory performance and misconduct has become increasingly stringent; some penalties are inappropriate and others arbitrary. In one case, an official received a disciplinary penalty for failing to answer a phone call from his supervisor when he was taking a shower at home after working hours.Footnote 34 In another case, an education bureau in Hunan province was criticized for allowing its officials to have snacks in the office.Footnote 35
Sanction-based accountability may have adverse effects. An emerging body of studies reveals that it is unrealistic and unfounded to imagine a situation in which bureaucrats only passively respond to external control.Footnote 36 Scholars refute the effectiveness of coercive supervision over bureaucrats and instead emphasize the impact of personal preferences and discretionary power on bureaucratic behaviour.Footnote 37 It is unlikely that bureaucrats will blindly obey top-down instructions which conflict with their own policy preferences and/or personal interests. Besides preference heterogeneity, bureaucrats’ information advantages over their superiors and their substantial discretionary authority also allow them to circumvent control.Footnote 38
In this light, the success of accountability lies with the cooperation, support and actions of civil servants in accountability.Footnote 39 Bureaucrats may cope with accountability pressure through certain types of strategic behaviour. Scholars warn about the salience of the accountability paradox – that is, stringent monitoring over bureaucrats’ compliance may repel bureaucrats’ responsible judgement and moral deliberation.Footnote 40 For example, unbearable accountability pressure may motivate bureaucrats to adopt a variety of defensive strategies to deal with the stress and not be caught.Footnote 41 Monitoring overloads may create red tape, discourage innovation and lead to risk-averse decision making.Footnote 42 In other words, sanction-based accountability is a double-edged sword: it may help to curb bureaucratic shirking but it can also encourage it under certain circumstances.
Data and Measurement
To show the relationship between sanction-based accountability and bureaucratic shirking, we draw on a large-N original survey among Chinese civil servants. The respondents were full-time public officials enrolled as part-time students in Master of Public Administration (MPA) programmes in universities. We chose MPA students as respondents because doing so allowed us to access a considerable number of civil servants from different government posts and with diverse backgrounds. We also tried to broaden the geographical coverage of the sample by selecting two or three MPA programmes in China's western, central and eastern regions. A total of 1,100 anonymous questionnaires were collected, of which 869 were valid. The respondents were from 24 different provinces; 45.5 per cent were male and 54.5 per cent were female.
Dependent variable
The dependent variable in this study is bureaucratic shirking, which consists of the three different types of shirking behaviour mentioned above: evading responsibility, shifting responsibility and reframing responsibility. We used two or three items to gauge respondents’ attitudes towards each type of shirking. The purpose was to measure respondents' perceptions of bureaucratic shirking rather than their actual engagement in it. The sensitivity of the questionnaire was therefore reduced. A five-point Likert scale was adopted for each item, with 1 being “completely disagree” and 5 being “completely agree,” and a higher score indicating a stronger propensity towards shirking. The measurement items and the scale's validity and reliability are presented in the Appendix and Appendix Table 1.
Explanatory variable
The independent variable, sanction-based accountability, is measured by six items that reflect the monitoring and punishment intensity imposed by superiors. An exploratory factor analysis of the six items presented in Appendix Table 2 shows that they can be aggregated into two major factors. Factor 1 reflects the intensity of monitoring, guaging whether respondents perceive their superiors’ supervision as being very strict. Factor 2 demonstrates the severity of punitive consequences, measuring whether and to what extent respondents consider that they may be punished if they perform poorly. We also performed a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on the two factors. The CFA model fits well (CFI = .997, TLI = .994, RMSEA = .027, PCLOSE = .892, SRMR = .019), and all factor loadings are significant. For the explanatory variable, we also used a five-point Likert scale in which a higher score indicates a higher level of monitoring intensity and more stringent punishment.
Control variables
Other confounding variables that may influence the dependent variable are included as controls. First, responsibility clarity is controlled for because it gives actors in the accountability chain a clear sense of who has what responsibilities, how and why, so that shirking can be prevented. For that purpose, the survey included such questions as whether respondents consider their responsibilities to be clearly defined. Second, resource constraint, referring to the shortage of manpower and material support for bureaucrats, is also controlled for because civil servants may feel particularly stressed and are more likely to reframe responsibilities if they lack sufficient resources to fulfil them.Footnote 43 A third control variable is public service motivation (PSM), which follows James Perry's measurement scale.Footnote 44 Scholars believe that PSM exerts strong positive effects on organizational performance by promoting a sense of citizenship and a high level of job involvement among civil servants.Footnote 45 Peer pressure, which is measured by whether colleagues are working hard, is also controlled for because bureaucrats interact with and learn from each other in an organization, and their solidary preference is a major factor influencing their decision on whether they should work or shirk.Footnote 46
All the four major control variables are gauged by a five-point Likert-type scale, with higher scores indicating greater responsibility clarity, more severe resource constraint, higher PSM, and stronger peer influence to work hard. Basic demographic variables are also controlled for, including gender and age, as well as other variables such as administrative rank and monthly income.Footnote 47
Analysis and Results
Descriptive statistics of all the variables are reported in Table 2. The results suggest that the respondents’ propensity to evade and shift responsibility is not strong, with average values being 2.11 and 2.82, respectively. Nevertheless, the likelihood for reframing responsibility is higher, with an average value of 3.66; 71.6 per cent of the respondents have a score higher than 3, the neutral point. The average values for monitoring intensity and punishment intensity are 3.75 and 3.51, respectively, indicating that sanction-based accountability imposed by superiors is rather strong.
Table 2: Descriptive Statistics of Variables
The results of the multiple linear regression analysis of the three types of shirking are reported in Table 3. The variance inflation factor (VIF) of each variable in the six models is much lower than the usual diagnosis criterion (10), demonstrating that there are no multicollinearity problems in these models. Models 1, 3 and 5 include only control variables, such as gender, age, administrative rank, monthly income, responsibility clarity and resource constraint, while independent variables are introduced in Models 2, 4 and 6. To account for all unobserved time-invariant province-level confounders, province fixed effects are included in all models.
Table 3: Regression Results of Three Types of Shirking
Notes:
1Age is recoded as a dummy variable in the regression model (“≤30” = 0, “>30” = 1). Standard errors in parentheses; *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1.
The results show that sanction-based accountability exerts different impacts on the three types of shirking behaviour. Monitoring intensity is negatively related to evading responsibility (β = -0.10, p < 0.05) in Model 2, but it has a positive impact on reframing responsibility (β = 0.16, p < 0.01) in Model 6. The effects of punishment intensity move in the same direction as those of monitoring intensity. Specifically, punishment intensity shows a significant negative correlation with evading responsibility (β = -0.12, p < 0.01) but has a positive relationship with reframing responsibility (β = 0.11, p < 0.05). In other words, the greater the respondents perceive monitoring and punishment intensity to be, the less likely they are to evade responsibility, but the more likely they are to reframe responsibility. This suggests that intensive sanction-based accountability may deter bureaucrats from evading responsibility, which is the more obvious and flagrant type of shirking, but it may induce some more subtle shirking strategies, such as reframing responsibility, to enable bureaucrats to cope with accountability pressure. The effects of monitoring and punishment intensity on shifting responsibility (namely, buck-passing) yield no statistical significance. This may be because although officials attempt to shift thorny responsibilities to others when facing stringent accountability, it is practically difficult to do as other officials would also avoid becoming scapegoats.
The regression results in Table 3 show some interesting effects of the control variables. Age, responsibility clarity, peer pressure, resource constraint and PSM have significant impacts on the propensity for shirking. Respondents over 30 years of age are more likely to shift responsibility and to reframe responsibility than those under 30. A possible reason for this is that as their work experience increases, officials may know how to deal with work pressures better by implementing various intricate strategies. Furthermore, responsibility clarity is negatively related to all three types of shirking behaviour, indicating that when responsibilities are clearly stated and assigned, it is more difficult for officials to shirk their duties by distorting them or shifting them to others. If responsibilities remain obscure, sanction-based accountability can only cause more buck-passing or playing it safe to avoid being blamed. Peer pressure is also negatively associated with the three types of shirking, demonstrating that if other colleagues are all dedicated to working, it is less likely for one to shirk his or her responsibility. Resource constraint shows a positive correlation with shifting responsibility and reframing responsibility. Hence, without an adequate supply of work-related resources, officials are more likely to shift workloads to others or distort tasks to make them easier to implement. PSM presents a negative association with evading responsibility and shifting responsibility. This means that bureaucrats with higher prosocial values are less inclined to be sloppy and inactive or to pass the buck to others.
Conclusion
This study addresses the underexplored question of whether sanction-based accountability can reduce bureaucratic shirking and serve as an effective cure for official malfeasance and nonfeasance. In the scholarly literature, the concept of accountability is often positively associated with the appropriate exercise of discretionary power.Footnote 48 Sanction-based accountability, in particular, is expected to play a significant role in promoting strict compliance among bureaucrats and in preventing them from shirking responsibilities. This study argues against this expectation. It first provides a nuanced picture of bureaucratic shirking by disaggregating it into three types: evading responsibility, shifting responsibility and reframing responsibility. This is followed by an examination of the impact of sanction-based accountability on each of the three types of shirking.
The findings reveal that intensified monitoring and severe punishment may deter bureaucrats from blatantly evading responsibility but may also induce more subtle types of shirking, such as reframing responsibility. Specifically, under heavy accountability pressure, bureaucrats may move away from conventional shirking behaviour, such as being sloppy, inactive or idle at work and slacking off. They may instead engage in more covert shirking activities. Some may avoid making innovations or changes in order to play it safe; others may fabricate an image of success in fulfilling their responsibilities in order to disguise their irresponsible behaviour. Thus, the intensification of sanction-based accountability may have a deterrent effect on some types of shirking but not on others. It may prevent bureaucrats from flagrantly evading responsibilities and stop abuses of power to some degree, but accountability pressure does not necessarily raise bureaucrats’ responsibility awareness; they may respond negatively by developing coping strategies.
The Chinese government has become aware of the potential problems of sanction-based accountability in recent years. In 2016, it called for the establishment of “fault-tolerance mechanisms” (rongcuo jizhi 容错机制) and incentive mechanisms to encourage reformers and innovators to put more effort into their work, show initiative and strive towards achievements.Footnote 49 The frequency of top-down inspections and assessments of local work has decreased since the central government issued its “Circular on the coordination of inspection, checking and assessment work” (Guanyu tongchou guifan ducha jiancha kaohe gongzuo de tongzhi 关于统筹规范督查检查考核工作的通知) in August 2018. However, accountability pressure within the Chinese bureaucracy will not disappear overnight: it takes time to institutionalize fault-tolerance mechanisms and to ensure their effective implementation.
Our study contributes to a better understanding of the complex patterns and causes of bureaucratic shirking in China. It illustrates that sanction-based accountability is by no means a panacea for bureaucratic shirking and, indeed, may even backfire by invoking opportunistic behaviour among bureaucrats. The theoretical implications of our findings go beyond China because bureaucratic shirking is a widespread problem for all governments and, as this study finds, it provides a good lens through which bureaucratic motivations and behaviour can be explored. Practically, our analysis of the responses of public officials to sanction-based accountability and of their attitudes towards shirking proves that externally imposed control is not a cure for shirking because it does not induce public officials to develop an inner sense of responsibility. In order to combat bureaucratic shirking, the Chinese government should place more emphasis on promoting a high level of public service motivation, value-based compliance and a strong awareness of public interest among its officials.
Acknowledgements
The work described in this article was supported by grants from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. 9042891) and City University of Hong Kong (Project No. 7005144).
Conflicts of interest
None.
Biographical notes
Wenyan TU is an assistant professor in the Institute for Global Public Policy and the LSE-Fudan Research Centre for Global Public Policy at Fudan University, Shanghai, China. Her main research interests are in the areas of corruption and integrity management, public accountability, and bureaucratic politics.
Ting GONG is a chair professor in the Institute for Global Public Policy and the School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University, Shanghai, and an adjunct professor in the department of public policy, City University of Hong Kong. Her research focuses on corruption and government ethics, public governance and contemporary Chinese politics.
Appendix
Survey items used to measure shirking propensities
Appendix Table 1: Reliability and Validity of the Scales of the Three Shirking Types of Behaviour
Appendix Table 2: Factor Loading
Respondents were asked to what extent they agree with the following statements.
Evading responsibility:
1. It is no big deal to delay tasks for two or three days.
2. It is ok to surf the internet or watch videos occasionally during working hours.
3. One does not have to handle work with great care.
Shifting responsibility:
1. More responsibilities lead to more mistakes, so one should get involved as little as possible.
2. One should avoid risk and give difficult tasks to others.
Reframing responsibility:
1. Well-written reports are more important than well-done jobs.
2. Trophy projects demonstrate good political performance and please superiors.
3. I tend to comply strictly with written rules, even though they are not in line with reality.
4. I stick to routines and do not want to make any change or innovation.
