This open access book is about mismanagement of public agencies as a threat to life and limb. Arguing that, while preventing disaster through public oversight is essentially easy, the difficult part for public officials and private contractors and consultants alike is to resist incentives that threaten professional skills and standards.

1. Introduction: Black Swans and Sinatra Inferences.- 2. Evaporated Responsibility: The Collapse of the West Gate Bridge in Melbourne on 15 October 1970.- 3. Intended Ignorance: The Collapse of the I-35 W Mississippi River Bridge on 1 August 2007.- 4. Erosion of Professional Integrity: The Collapse of the Canterbury TV Building in Christchurch on 22 February 2011.- 5. Politicization of the Non-Politicizable: The Collapse of the Ice Skating Rink in Bad Reichenhall on 2 January 2006.- 6. Conclusion: Strategic Learning and Situational High Reliability.

“In what is certain to become an indispensable book on public failures, their origins, and consequences, Wolfgang Seibel builds piece-by-piece a unique contribution to the study of rare events and the search for resilience in public policy. This is a must-read for those who want to better understand such ‘black swan’ events and the search for resilience.” — Andrew B. Whitford, Professor at the School of Public and International Affairs, University of Georgia, USA “A must read for practitioners and scholars, Wolfgang Seibel’s latest book provides profound insight in the intersection of public administration mismanagement and the absence of responsible leadership. An exceptional contribution to the field.” — Janine O’Flynn, Professor of Public Management, The Australia and New Zealand School of Government, Australia This open access book is about mismanagement of public agencies as a threat to life and limb. Collapsing bridges and buildings kill people and often leave many more injured. Such disasters do not happen out of the blue nor are they purely technical in nature since construction and maintenance are subject to safety regulation and enforcement by governmental agencies. The book analyses four relevant cases from Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Germany. Rather than stressing well-known pathologies of bureaucracy as a potential source of disaster, this book argues, learning for the sake of prevention should aim at neutralizing threats to integrity and strengthening a sense of responsibility among public officials.Wolfgang Seibel is Professor of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Konstanz, and an Adjunct Professor of Public Administration at the Hertie School in Berlin, Germany. His new book is an outcome of the research project “Black Swans in Public Administration: Rare Organizational Failure with Severe Consequences” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

“In what is certain to become an indispensable book on public failures, their origins, and consequences, Wolfgang Seibel builds piece-by-piece a unique contribution to the study of rare events and the search for resilience in public policy. Bridges and buildings are perhaps the best real-world synonym for rational design and deliberation; proper construction and maintenance is the first and primary goal of entire professions. This book demonstrates how accidents happen, how social processes are fundamental to their occurrence, and how learning and inference about their causes is a core public management function. Along the way, Seibel masterfully musters evidence from a multitude of sources to painstakingly document both bridge and building failures and the organizational pathologies that accompany them. This is a must-read for those who want to better understand such 'black swan' events and the search for resilience.” (Andrew B. Whitford, Professor at the School of Public and International Affairs, University of Georgia, USA) “A must read for practitioners and scholars, Wolfgang Seibel's latest book provides profound insight in the intersection of public administration mismanagement and the absence of responsible leadership. Through a series of devastating cases, he provides a forensic analysis of how and why disasters occur, showing us what happens when we ignore warning signs and fail to act. His work challenges us all to step up, embrace a more strategic approach to learning, and prevent these catastrophic disasters from happening. An exceptional contribution to the field.” (Janine O’Flynn, Professor of Public Management, The Australia and New Zealand School of Government, Australia) “Wolfgang Seibel convincingly demonstrates that learning from collapsing structures should not be left to the engineers only. The governance path to disaster needs to be addressed in order to learn and avoid future disasters. Seibel’s book provides both the theoretical and methodological underpinnings and a roadmap for learning from accidents.” (Stavros Zouridis, member of the Dutch Safety Board and Professor of Public Administration, Tilburg University, The Netherlands)    

This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access Uses empirical case studies to analyse how organizational failure can lead to human tragedy Focuses on 'Black Swan' events that are difficult to predict, rather than crisis-prone organisations Demonstrates how causal analytic processes can trace theory-based inferences

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