Risk management in public service delivery: multi-dimensional scale development and validation

Abstract

Risk is omnipresent in public service delivery, which can be difficult to accept politically. Risk management is leadership behavior targeted toward enabling frontline workers to mitigate negative consequences to service recipients in risky situations. The aim of this article is to develop a theoretical framework of risk management in public service delivery and an associated, standardized, individual-level scale for use in studying leadership behavior. The article develops and tests a second-order model of risk management, employing insights from qualitative interviews with 16 public service managers and data from a survey of 187 public service managers and 698 of their employees. The factor structure was tested and validated using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. The results show that the scale correlates with public service motivation, turnover intention, and visionary leadership, which provides evidence of criterion and convergent validity. The scale has no relationship to number of work hours or age, which is supportive of discriminant validity.

Acknowledgments

I am greatly indebted to Kim Sass Mikkelsen, who has provided useful comments on the conceptual development, as well as valuable input on the preliminary analyses. I am thankful for the feedback, which has improved the article significantly. Daniel Skov Gregersen from the Crown Prince Frederik Center for Public Leadership also deserves a mention and thanks for his support with the analyses.

An early version of this article was presented at the 2020 European Group for Public Administration (EGPA) Conference in the Permanent Study Group III on Public Personnel Policies. I thank the participants for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Emily Rose Tangsgaard

Emily Rose Tangsgaard ([email protected]) is a third year doctoral student at the Crown Prince Frederik Center for Public Leadership, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University. Her research interests include risks in public organizations, decision-making in public service delivery, and public leadership.