Sangam: A Confluence of Knowledge Streams

Are public managers more risk averse? Framing effects and status quo bias across the sectors

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dc.contributor Defense Resources Management Institute
dc.contributor Naval Postgraduate School
dc.creator Nicholson-Crotty, Sean
dc.creator Nicholson-Crotty, Jill
dc.creator Webeck, Sean
dc.date 2021-08-02T23:25:34Z
dc.date 2022-05-10T17:57:52Z
dc.date 2022-05-10T17:57:52Z
dc.date.accessioned 2022-05-19T07:45:27Z
dc.date.available 2022-05-19T07:45:27Z
dc.identifier Nicholson-Crotty, Sean, Jill Nicholson-Crotty, and Sean Webeck. "Are public managers more risk averse? Framing effects and status quo bias across the sectors." Journal of Behavioral Public Administration 2.1 (2019).
dc.identifier http://hdl.handle.net/10945/69426
dc.identifier.uri http://localhost:8080/xmlui/handle/CUHPOERS/100182
dc.description The article of record as published may be found at https://doi.org/10.30636/jbpa.21.3
dc.description Modern reforms meant to incentivize public managers to be more innovative and accepting of risk are often implicitly based in the longstanding assumption that public employees are more risk averse than their private sector counterparts. We argue, however, that there is more to learn about the degree to which public and private managers differ in terms of risk aversion. In order to address this gap, we field a series of previously validated experiments designed to assess framing effects and status quo bias in a sample of public and private sector managers. Our results indicate that public managers are not more risk averse or anchored to the status quo than their private sector counterparts; in fact, the findings suggest the opposite may be true under some conditions. In addition, our results fail to confirm previous findings in the literature suggesting that public service motivation is associated with risk aversion. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these results for the study of risky choice in the public sector and for modern public management reforms.
dc.format 15 p.
dc.format application/pdf
dc.publisher Monterey, California: Naval Postgraduate School
dc.rights This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.
dc.title Are public managers more risk averse? Framing effects and status quo bias across the sectors
dc.type Article


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