Risk Management and Risk Avoidance in Agency Decision Making

• Published date: 01 September 2014
• Author: Adam Eckerd
• Date: 01 September 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12240

Adam Eckerd is assistant professor in

the Center for Public Administration and

Policy at Virginia Tech. His research focuses

on the complex relationship between

organizational decision making and social

outcomes, with particular interests in

environmental justice, nonprof‌i t evaluation,

and contract management.

E-mail: aeckerd@vt.edu

616 Public Administration Review • September | October 2014

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 74, Iss. 5, pp. 616–629. © 2014 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12240.

Adam Eckerd

Virginia Tech

Despite decades of ef‌f orts to enhance the public’s role in

bureaucratic decision making, citizens still tend to have

little inf‌l uence on the decisions that public managers

make. Solutions often focus on the processes or structures

of participation, but such changes may be of limited

ef‌f ectiveness if the structure is on ly part of the problem.

Although much research has argued the normative jus-

tif‌i cation for including the public, noting that frame-

works that do not encourage genuine participation may

diminish rather than enhance public inf‌l uence, there has

been less focus on how participants’ divergent frames of

reference may also diminish the inf‌l uence of public input.

 is research explores this gap from a risk management

perspective, suggesting that public managers tend to view

risk as something to be managed, whereas citizens tend to

view risk as best avoided.

Including the public in public agency decision

making is perceived not only as a means to bet-

ter policy but also as a democratic end on its own

(Bingham, Nabatchi, and O’Leary 2005; Frederickson

1991; Roberts 2008; Stivers 1990;  omas 1990). As

such, public managers have long been encouraged, and

in some cases required, to include public input in their

decisions (Golden 1998; Koontz 1999; West 2004).

Subsequent evaluations of the extent to which this input

inf‌l uences decisions are mixed at best (Delli Carpini,

Cook, and Jacobs 2004; Diduck and Sinclair 2002;

Hartley and Wood 2005; King, Feltey, and Susel 1998).

Although there is wide agreement that the public should

be involved (Renn et al. 1993), there has also been

criticism, noting that the modes of receiving input often

focus on the process rather than the outcome (Fischer

1993), rarely result in genuine discourse (Halvorsen

2003) or collaboration (Huxham and Vangen 2000),

include participants that are

not representative of the actual

stakeholders (McComas 2001),

and may actually be counterpro-

ductive (Innes and Booher 2004;

Irvin and Stansbury 2004). In

short, despite democratic intent,

previous empirical evidence

suggests that public inclusion has little ef‌f ect on subse-

quent decisions and could actually exacerbate rather than

close the democracy def‌i cit (Innes and Booher 2004).

In the U.S. federal government, and often in the states,

comment-response processes are a common form of

soliciting public input (Jewell and Bero 2006; Yackee

2006). With widespread agreement that the comment-

response system does not foster collaboration or achieve

its intended purpose (Innes and Booher 2004), propos-

als for more ef‌f ective inclusion often focus on devising

a better form of participation, under the assumption

that well-designed participatory processes can create

genuine democratic discourse (King, Feltey, and Susel

1998; Ryfe 2005; Vigoda 2002). However, although

altering the form of participation may be a necessary

component for increasing public inf‌l uence on bureau-

cratic decisions, form alone appears to be insuf‌f‌i cient to

foster genuine discourse (Dorcey and McDaniels 2001;

Koontz 1999; Koontz et al. 2004; Rummery 2006).

 is research investigates one potential reason why.

Ef‌f ective and inf‌l uential public participation is,

among other potential variables, dependent on the

context of participation (Delli Carpini, Cook, and

Jacobs 2004; Rowe and Frewer 2004), the extent to

which stakeholders are informed about and have an

understanding of the policy (Baker, Addams, and

Davis 2005), the breadth of stakeholders that are

involved (Koontz and Johnson 2004), the level of goal

incongruence among the dif‌f erent stakeholder groups

(Gastil 2000), and, f‌i nally, the focus of this research,

varying perceptions of the risk involved in public

projects, and the extent to which the government is

able to convey (and the public interprets) the poten-

tial risks and benef‌i ts of a policy

(Frewer 1999; Kasperson 1986).

 e framework for this article

is based on risk perception

and management. People in

professional roles and people

in citizen roles may be coming

Risk Management and Risk Avoidance in Agency

Decision Making

In the U.S. federal govern-

ment, and often in the states,

comment-response processes are

a common form of soliciting

public input.