Abstract
This concluding chapter addresses two ‘so what?’ questions raised throughout the volume. First, if attention biases are a pertinent factor in organizational life in political contexts, what can be done about them? Bach and Wegrich discuss three public sector reform approaches (joined-up government, impact assessment, and behavioural insights) in terms of how, and how successfully, they address different attention biases. Second, how can research on organizational attention biases take the role of institutional context systematically into account and explore particular different institutions’ vulnerabilities to organizational attention biases? Two ideal-type institutional modes of coordination—hierarchical and negotiated coordination—are discussed in terms of their susceptibility to attention biases. Taken together, the discussion of these two questions outlines an agenda for future research the volume seeks to stimulate.
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Bach, T., Wegrich, K. (2019). How to Deal with the Blind Spots of Public Bureaucracies. In: Bach, T., Wegrich, K. (eds) The Blind Spots of Public Bureaucracy and the Politics of Non-Coordination. Executive Politics and Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76672-0_12
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