Disentangling Risk Management and Error Management in the Public Sector: A Theoretical Framework

Public organizations have little tolerance when it comes to risks and errors. At the same time, environmental, technological, and demographic changes call for new ways of doing things to improve public sector performance. Achieving this may involve trial and error. Therefore, there is a need to effectively combine risk management and error management practices. However, the concepts tend to be intermingled and confused, which hinders public managers from deliberately exercising one or the other managerial behavior, or productively combining them. The purpose of this article is to theoretically disentangle risk management from error management. We argue that risk management is a prospective leadership behavior, while error management is a retrospective one. In our theoretical framework, we describe both concepts according to their temporal, behavioral, and normative characteristics. Testable propositions are developed regarding the theorized differences between the two concepts and their associated behaviors, and we discuss ways in which the two concepts can be applied in order to advance future research and, ultimately, improve the way public organizations respond to risks and errors.