Resilience in public administration: Moving from risk avoidance to assuring public policy outcomes through the resilience chain

Traditionally, risk management approaches in public administration have had a strong focus on likely future negative events. Moreover, they have often resulted in the formulation of complex “blame avoidance strategies”, through which public agencies attempt to minimise damage to themselves and deflect blame for failure (often without great success). Such approaches lead naturally to an emphasis on risk avoidance. However, this has the unfortunate effect that it pays too attention to the trade-off whereby risk reduction normally also entails reduction in the expected level of outcomes. A radically different approach is possible, in which we accept the inevitability of some failures, so we accept a higher level of risk and seek to embed resilience. Through this approach, we can minimise the negative consequences of failure and can realise the transformative potential of a responsible risk culture and proportionate response to risk.

Cite as: Bovaird, T. and Quirk, B. (2017), “Resilience in public administration: Moving from risk avoidance to assuring public policy outcomes through the resilience chain” in Thomas R. Klassen, Denita Cepiku and T. J. Lah (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Global Public Policy and Administration. London: Routledge (chapter 24).