Influencing public managers’ decision processes from an evidence-based assessment of cognitive biases and nudging techniques has the potential to improve effectiveness through strategic choices that shape goal attainment. Indeed, decisions in the public sector are often shaped by a complex array of forces. This is especially true in the fluid environment of the information age when public managers are inundated with countless challenges (e.g., Kelman, Sanders, and Pandit 2016; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 2017). Ready access to information, adaptable technology, and an ever-combative political environment has contributed to the complexity of decision making in the public sector. Taking action on public policy means public mangers must not only overcome these complexities in their environment, but also their own cognitive limitations and moral impasses (e.g., Kahneman 2011; Thaler and Sustein 2008). Understanding cognitive biases and developing interventions to limit them are increasingly germane topics for further research (e.g., Belle, Cantarelli, and Belardinelli 2017; Grimmelikhuijsen, Jilke, Olsen, and Tummers 2017; Gordon, Kornberger, and Klegg 2009; Kelman, Sanders, and Pandit 2016; Vlaev et al. 2016).
Overall, we aim at revisiting the theoretical foundations of behavioral public administration and defining an evidence-based research agenda of interest to scholars, policy makers, and public managers alike. We do so by (i) reconciling different taxonomies of cognitive biases in decision making (e.g., heuristics, experienced utility, and decision utility) and deliberate strategies to intervene on them (e.g. debiasing, rebiasing, and nudging); (ii) systematically reviewing research into cognitive biases in public administration, management, and policy and tracing it back to theoretical foundations of behavioral sciences, and (iii) discussing the public policy making implications raising from extant scholarship on cognitive biases and debiasing interventions.
Evidence use in government – its contribution to creating public value
