Behavioral Public Administration ad fontes: A Synthesis of Research on Bounded Rationality, Cognitive Biases, and Nudging in Public Organizations

Abstract

This article provides a comprehensive overview of how policy makers, practitioners, and scholars can fruitfully use behavioral science to tackle public administration, management, and policy issues. The article systematically reviews 109 articles in the public administration discipline that are inspired by the behavioral sciences to identify emerging research trajectories, significant gaps, and promising applied research directions. In an attempt to systematize and take stock of the nascent behavioral public administration scholarship, the authors trace it back to the seminal works of three Nobel Laureates—Herbert Simon, Daniel Kahneman, and Richard Thaler—and their work on bounded rationality, cognitive biases, and nudging, respectively. The cognitive biases investigated by the studies reviewed fall into the categories of accessibility, loss aversion, and overconfidence/optimism. Nudging and choice architecture are discussed as viable strategies for leveraging these cognitive traps in an attempt to alter behavior for the better, among both citizens and public servants.

The role(s) of accounting and performance measurement systems in contemporary public administration

“…Mainly applying experimental designs, these studies provide new insights into how individuals process performance data (see Nielsen and Baekgaard 2013;James and Mosley 2014;Olsen 2015Olsen , 2017Barrows et al 2016;Belardinelli et al 2018;Moynihan 2018). While there has been a strong focus on exploring a range of cognitive biases (e.g., negativity bias, anchoring effects) related to the presentation/ processing of performance information (e.g., Belardinelli et al 2018;Moynihan 2018;Battaglio et al 2019), scholars have also started to look at the micro-foundations of the role of broader organizational and institutional factors, such as institutional pressures (Nielsen and Moynihan 2017;Bellé et al 2019), in influencing the use of performance information in decision-making.…”

Emotional Responses to Bureaucratic Red Tape

“…Thus, we go beyond studies of positive and negative affect based on self‐reports after an event has taken place (Ashkanasy, Humphrey, and Huy ). Third, the experiment merits further studies at the intersection of behavioral public administration (Battaglio et al ; Grimmelikhuijsen et al ) and organizational neuroscience (Reina, Peterson, and Waldman ). It illuminates how cognitive and affective processes interact in subjective assessments of bureaucratic organization, potentially causing misattributions and bias in a variety of public sector interactions.…”

Get Your Shades Now—The Future's Still Bright: Leveraging Human Resources for Tomorrow's Public Service

“…Appreciating the role behavioral science can play in eliciting meaning may also prove to be a fruitful endeavor. In this issue, Battaglio Jr. et al () provide a comprehensive overview of how policy makers, practitioners, and scholars can fruitfully use behavioral science to tackle public administration, management, and policy issues. This stream of research illustrates how cognitive biases systematically affect public policy and management decisions.…”