Failure Management Approaches and Public Service Quality: Empirical Evidence from Serbia

Abstract

Failure of public services has been a vividly debated topic in both theory and practice of public administration. Surprisingly, only a handful of scholarly papers have empirically examined the failure management practices and provided any useful tools and techniques for managing the failure. The aim of this paper is to explore the ways in which central government administration manages the failure and how it affects the quality of their services. The study collected 568 responses from the political appointees and career civil servants across a wide range of ministries and central government agencies in the Republic of Serbia. The results indicate that the analysis of failure plays a pivotal role in the learning process and ultimately leads to the improvement of public service quality.