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2019 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

1. Blind Spots, Biased Attention, and the Politics of Non-coordination

Authors : Tobias Bach, Kai Wegrich

Published in: The Blind Spots of Public Bureaucracy and the Politics of Non-Coordination

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Bach and Wegrich introduce the key theme of the volume, which revolves around understanding how routine processes of decision-making in public sector organizations potentially lead to problematic outcomes in terms of coordination and problem solving. Instead of viewing those outcomes as the result of organizational or individual pathologies, the chapter traces the origins of non-coordination within and between organizations to intentionally rational organizational behaviour. Conceptualizing blind spots as part of a larger universe of biases in organizational attention, based on established theoretical notions of bounded rationality and institutionalized organizations, the authors show how different types of attention biases provide novel insights into seemingly irrational or uncoordinated administrative behaviour.

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next chapter Accounting for Blind Spots
Footnotes
1
The study by Hartlapp et al. (2013) uses the theoretical language of ‘bureaucratic politics’ yet in essence tells a story of selective perception that is biased towards the problem views and solutions of the unit in charge and patterns of negative coordination as elaborated by Scharpf (1994).
 
2
Hood (1998) uses both ‘blind spots’ (p. 18) and ‘Achilles’ Heel or characteristic path of collapse’ (p. 27) when referring to those inherent weaknesses of different models of organization in public management.
 
3
Another mechanism discussed by Fligstein et al. (2017) is organizational conditions that promote ‘positive asymmetries’, or the idea that actors in specific social settings bias information towards best-case scenarios.
 
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Metadata
Title
Blind Spots, Biased Attention, and the Politics of Non-coordination
Authors
Tobias Bach
Kai Wegrich
Copyright Year
2019
Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Book
The Blind Spots of Public Bureaucracy and the Politics of Non-Coordination

Print ISBN: 978-3-319-76671-3

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-76672-0

Copyright Year: 2019

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76672-0_1

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