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In addition to difficulties gathering and evaluating complete information, cognitive limitations and biases preclude individuals from making fully value‐maximizing choices when making decisions. It has been suggested that, done properly, involving advisors can compensate for individual‐level limitations. However, the "groupthink" tradition has highlighted ways group‐aided decision making can fail to live up to its potential. Out of this literature has emerged a paradigm Janis calls "vigilant problem‐solving." For this article, we interviewed 20 heads of subcabinet‐level organizations in the U.S. federal government, asking questions about how they made important decisions. Ten were nominated by "good‐government" experts, 10 chosen at random. We wanted to see whether there were differences in how members of those two groups made decisions, specifically, to what extent executives in the two categories used a "vigilant" process. We found, however, that similarities between the two groups overwhelmed differences: As best as we were able to measure, decision making by U.S. subcabinet executives tracks vigilant decision making recommendations fairly closely. The similarity reflects a common style of senior‐level decision making, which we theorize grows out of government bureaucracy's methodical culture. We did, however, develop evidence for a difference between outstanding executives and others on another dimension of decision making style. Outstanding executives valued decision making decisiveness—"bias for action"—more than the comparison group. Perhaps, then, what distinguishes outstanding executives from others is not vigilance but decisiveness. Contrary to the implications of the groupthink literature, the danger in government may be "paralysis by analysis" as much or more than groupthink.

AbstractSenior government executives make many difficult decisions, but research suggests that individual cognitive limitations and the pathologies of "groupthink" impede their ability to make value‐maximizing choices. From this literature has emerged a normative model that Irving Janis calls "vigilant problem solving," a process intended for the most complex decisions. To explore its use by senior public officials, the authors interviewed 20 heads of subcabinet‐level organizations in the U.S. federal government, asking how they made their most difficult decisions. The initial focus was on whether they employed a vigilant approach to making decisions that were informationally, technically, or politically complex. Most executives identified their single most‐difficult decision as one that required courage; they often made such courageous decisions after personal reflection and/or consultation with a small number of trusted advisors rather in ways that could be described as vigilant. The different approaches for making complex decisions, compared with those involving courage, are discussed and a contingency model of effective executive decision making is proposed that requires leaders (and their advisors) to be "ambidextrous" in their approach.

Empirical works measuring whether interagency collaborations delivering public services produce better outcomes are few, and none looks inside the black box of collaboration management practices. We examine whether there are collaboration management practices associated with improved performance of Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships, an interagency collaboration in England and Wales. These exist in every local authority in England and Wales, so there are enough of them to permit quantitative analysis. And their aim is crime reduction, and crime data over time are available, allowing actual outcomes (rather than outputs, perceptions, or self-reports) to be analyzed longitudinally. We find that there are management practices associated with greater success at reducing crime, but only if applied under background circumstances favorable to collaboration. Those potentially effective collaboration management practices are similar to effective tools for managing any organization: being a good collaboration manager involves good management, period. However, under circumstances unfavorable to collaboration success, performance is worse than it would be if no collaboration had existed at all, suggesting that in some circumstances, setting up a collaboration in the first place is a bad idea. Adapted from the source document.