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Abstract “On-the-spotism” is an important tradition of China’s national governance. The “leadership observation” currently adopted in some places is a very important “On-the-spotism” work method. Based on the case study of leadership observation， this paper expands the principal-agent theory and extracts the theoretical framework of “single principal and multiple agents”， which is used to analyze the interactive relationship and mechanism of attention competition between the supervisor and the supervisee in the process of leadership observation. The study shows that leadership observation is an important path for county leaders to display， transmit， and compete for attention， and it is also an important foothold for county leaders to promote the implementation of work and realize their administrative intentions. By observation， the interactive relationship between the principal and the agent (the supervisor and the supervisee) centered upon the leadership attention competition is manifested in three mechanisms， namely the “expression-feedback” mechanism， the “incentive-competition” mechanism， and the “strengthening-maintenance” mechanism. Under the condition of “single principal and multiple agents” organization， leadership observation helps to mobilize the enthusiasm of agents (grassroots cadres) and promote the implementation of key tasks of the county government. However， it is easy to generate such organizational consequences as the strengthening of the control of the principal， the dissipation of governance resources， the blurring of attention focus and the displacement of organizational goals.
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Received: 23 September 2022
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2022, Vol. 61 
