Hood The Blame Game

Spin, Bureaucracy, and Self-Preservation in Government
Course Book
ISBN: 978-1-4008-3681-9
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 240 Seiten

The blame game, with its finger-pointing and mutual buck-passing, is a familiar feature of politics and organizational life, and blame avoidance pervades government and public organizations at every level. Political and bureaucratic blame games and blame avoidance are more often condemned than analyzed. In The Blame Game, Christopher Hood takes a different approach by showing how blame avoidance shapes the workings of government and public services. Arguing that the blaming phenomenon is not all bad, Hood demonstrates that it can actually help to pin down responsibility, and he examines different kinds of blame avoidance, both positive and negative.

Hood traces how the main forms of blame avoidance manifest themselves in presentational and "spin" activity, the architecture of organizations, and the shaping of standard operating routines. He analyzes the scope and limits of blame avoidance, and he considers how it plays out in old and new areas, such as those offered by the digital age of websites and e-mail. Hood assesses the effects of this behavior, from high-level problems of democratic accountability trails going cold to the frustrations of dealing with organizations whose procedures seem to ensure that no one is responsible for anything.

Delving into the inner workings of complex institutions, The Blame Game proves how a better understanding of blame avoidance can improve the quality of modern governance, management, and organizational design.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hood, Christopher

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Verwaltungswissenschaft, Öffentliche Verwaltung
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Betriebswirtschaft Organisationstheorie, Organisationssoziologie, Organisationspsychologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations vii

Preface ix

Part One: Blame, Credit, and Trust in Executive Government

Chapter One: Credit Claiming, Blame Avoidance, and Negativity Bias 3

Chapter Two: Players in the Blame Game: Inside the World of Blame Avoidance 24

Part Two: Avoiding Blame: Three Basic Strategies

Chapter Three: Presentational Strategies: Winning the Argument, Drawing a Line, Changing the Subject, and Keeping a Low Profi le 47

Chapter Four: Agency Strategies: Direct or Delegate, Choose or Inherit? 67

Chapter Five: Policy or Operational Strategies 90

Chapter Six: The Institutional Dynamics of Blameworld: A New Tefl on Era? 112

Part Three: Living in a World of Blame Avoidance

Chapter Seven: Mixing and Matching Blame-Avoidance Strategies 135

Chapter Eight: Democracy, Good Governance, and Blame Avoidance 157

Chapter Nine: The Last Word 181

Notes 187

References 201

Index 219

Über Autor(innen)

Christopher Hood is the Gladstone Professor of Government at All Souls College, Oxford. His books include The Limits of Administration, The Tools of Government, and The Art of the State.