Risk Management and Risk Avoidance in Agency Decision Making

Abstract

Despite decades of efforts to enhance the public's role in bureaucratic decision making, citizens still tend to have little influence on the decisions that public managers make. Solutions often focus on the processes or structures of participation, but such changes may be of limited effectiveness if the structure is only part of the problem. Although much research has argued the normative justification for including the public, noting that frameworks that do not encourage genuine participation may diminish rather than enhance public influence, there has been less focus on how participants’ divergent frames of reference may also diminish the influence of public input. This 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.

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