The blame game
Subtitle: spin, bureaucracy, and self-preservation in government
By: Christopher Hood
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Princeton, N.J
Language: eng
Number of pages: 226
ISBN-13: 9780691129952
Description: The blame, game with its finger-pointing and mutual buck-passing, is a familiar feature of politics and organizational life, and blame avoidance pervades government and public organizations at every level. Political and bureaucratic blame games and blame avoidance are more often condemned than analyzed. In the Blame Game, Christopher Hood takes a different approach by showing how blame avoidance shapes the workings of government and public services. Arguing that the blaming phenomenon is not all bad, Hood demonstrates that it can actually help to pin down responsibility, and he examines different kinds of blame avoidance, both positive and negative.

Hood traces how the main forms of blame avoidance manifest themselves in presentational and "spin" activity, the architecture of organizations, and the shaping of standard operating routines. He analyzes the scope and limits of blame avoidance, and he considers how it plays out in old and new areas, such as those offered by the digital age of websites and e-mail. Hood assesses the effects of this behavior, from high-level problems of democratic accountability trails going cold to the frustrations of dealing with organizations whose procedures seem to ensure that no one is responsible for anything.

Delving into the inner workings of complex institutions, The Blame Game proves how a better understanding of blame avoidance can improve the quality of modern governance, management, and organizational design. --Book Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Blame, credit, and trust in executive government; title: Credit-claiming, blame avoidance, and negativity bias; title: Players in the blame game : inside the world of blame avoidance; title: Avoiding blame : three basic strategies; title: Presentational strategies : winning the argument, drawing a line; title: Changing the subject and keeping a low profile; title: Agency strategies: direct or delegate, choose or inherit?; title: Policy or operational strategies; title: The institutional dynamics of "blameworld" : a new teflon era?; title: Living in a world of blame avoidance; title: Mixing and matching blame-avoidance strategies; title: Democracy, good governance and blame-avoidance; title: The last word.