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Post-crisis learning in public agencies: what do we learn from both actors and institutions?

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Schiffino, Nathalie [UCL] Taskin, Laurent [UCL] Donis, Céline [UCL] Raone, Julien [UCL]

Post-crisis learning is a challenge for public organizations, and especially for agencies which handle health and environmental risks. This article investigates how the Belgian Food Safety Agency settles mechanisms for drawing lessons from crises while ensuring day-to-day routine. The framework by Crozier and Friedberg is used as a guideline to consider both the actors and the system, both strategic games and institutional constraints. The article helps in understanding the institutional logics underpinning how the public organizations learn from societal risk and crisis. Centralization and openness appear to be guiding principles, resulting from the learning games. They also generate tensions that the actors’ games manage by defining new rules for cooperation. Both the practice (through our case study) and the theory (combining actors and institutions) broaden the lens of policy analysis for what policy-making at organizational level concerns.

Document type Article de périodique (Journal article) – Article de recherche
Access type Accès interdit
Publication date 2016
Language Anglais
Journal information "Policy Studies" - Vol. Vol. 38,, no. n°1, p. 59-75
Peer reviewed yes
Publisher Routledge ((United Kingdom) Abingdon)
issn 0144-2872
e-issn 1470-1006
Publication status Publié
Affiliations UCL - SSH/LouRIM - Louvain Research Institute in Management and Organizations
UCL - SSH/SPLE - Institut de sciences politiques Louvain-Europe
Keywords public administration ; public policy ; learning ; multidisciplinary research ; risk ; public organization
Links
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Bibliographic reference Schiffino, Nathalie ; Taskin, Laurent ; Donis, Céline ; Raone, Julien. Post-crisis learning in public agencies: what do we learn from both actors and institutions?. In: Policy Studies, Vol. Vol. 38,, no. n°1, p. 59-75
Permanent URL http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/174597