4.2 Elementos presentes en la legislación
4.2.3 Regla de crecimiento al gasto público
3.1. Introduction
This chapter sets out the deductive methodology to address Research Question One, setting an essential foundation for Research Question Two. Without a sound understanding of the nature of strategic risk in local authorities it would not be possible to meaningfully explore its assessment. The chapter starts by setting out a number of preliminary matters and provides a conceptual summary of the research as a whole. It then maps out how the gaps in knowledge with respect to Research Question One that were identified in Chapter 2 have been addressed. This is divided into two elements: a review of current practice in the UK and beyond, and of relevant standards and guidelines; and further analysis. Key to the latter is the use of Snowden (2002) and Snowden and Boone’s (2007) Cynefin model to develop a fuller understanding of strategic risk in local authorities.
3.2. Overall Research Design
This section provides a brief conceptual summary of the research as a whole, places Research Question One within the overall research and sets out a number of preliminary matters that have been key to the research design. It finishes by explaining how the gaps in knowledge with respect to Research Question One identified in Chapter 2 have been addressed.
3.2.1. Preliminary Matters
The starting point, based on the researcher’s previous professional experience, and hence a starting assumption of the research, has been a strong sense that the current practice of strategic risk assessment in local authorities could be significantly improved and that the identification of these improvements would require a fundamental review. It would not be just a matter of minor adjustments.
This assumption led to a research design based on the use of multiple sources, as set out in this Chapter and in Chapter 5 for Research Question Two. The findings from these sources are compared and, where appropriate, triangulated in Chapter 4 (Results and Analysis for Research Question One) and Chapter 7 (Conclusions).
It was also recognised from a very early stage that the research would need to embrace the qualitative aspects of risk and risk assessment, and not be purely quantitative. Silverman’s cautions against relying solely on interviews have been heeded as regards the potential for the qualitative researcher to be “blinkered … to the possible gains of other kinds of data” (2007, p41), further reinforcing the case for using multiple sources. Interviews have primarily been used: to validate, for example, to seek to confirm compliance with documented procedures; to provide additional detail, for example, how practitioners deal with any lack of clarity in the documented procedures; and to probe more deeply, for example, whether the documented approach is followed for sensitive and potentially embarrassing risks. Access to interviewees has proved to be more difficult than expected and interviewees have been keen to emphasise issues of confidentiality and anonymity as regards themselves and the local authority for which they work. As a result, references to the all interviewees and their organisations have been anonymised.
The term “current practice” in this report refers to the process of defining and assessing strategic risk in an individual local authority as set out in the local authority’s own documents, typically referred to as a risk management “policy” or “strategy”, and as supplemented by associated reports and risk registers and the evidence of compliance, or otherwise, that they provide. These have been augmented by interviews, as described above.
Pervading the research is a sense that current practice may be a bureaucratic process of “procedural compliance”8 as defined by Bryman et al (1994, p178) and an aspiration that a better, more credible, model could help to motivate and support more effective risk management in local authorities and, hence, in the public sector as a whole. These assumptions are tested throughout the research.
The research was underpinned by the clear sense developed in Chapter 2 that risk in the public sector is different to risk in the private sector. In defining the research methodology an assumption has consequently been made that risk management approaches in the private sector will only be considered when, and if, they are clearly relevant to the public sector. To do otherwise would have been to ignore the clear messages from the literature that risk is context-dependent and can only be properly understood in the light of that context.
3.2.2. Research Questions
The two research questions, as established by the literature review in Chapter 2, are as follows. Research Question One
What is the nature of strategic risk in English local authorities?
Research Question Two
What are the key dimensions and aspects of strategic risk facing local authorities and how can risk be assessed on the basis of these to provide a meaningful indicator of total risk to effectively inform decision making?
This chapter focuses on the methodology for Research Question One.
3.2.3. How the Gaps in Knowledge will be Addressed for Research Question One
Table 3.1 restates the gaps in knowledge with respect to the Research Question One identified in Chapter 2 and summarises the methodologies to address them. The following sections of this chapter then explain those methodologies in turn.
8
“a response to an organizational innovation in which the technical requirements of the innovation … are broadly adhered to, but where there are substantial reservations about its efficacy and only partial commitment to it, so that there is a tendency for the procedures associated with the innovation to be adhered to with less than a total commitment to its aims” (1994, p178)
3.2.4. Reliability, Validity and Credibility
It is crucial that all aspects of the research are reliable, valid and credible. These needs have been carefully considered and designed into the research methodology.
As regards the sampling for Research Question One, these matters are summarised in Section 3.5. More widely, as these matters have an even greater bearing on the research to address Research Question Two, the provisions in the research design for ensuring reliability, validity and credibility are set out in Chapter 5 with the methodology for Research Question Two.
Specific measures with respect to the methodology for Research Question One are explained in this Chapter.
Table 3.1: Gaps in the Literature with Respect to Research Question One
Review of Current Practice in the UK and Beyond and of Relevant Standards and Guidelines
Further Analysis Document Analysis and Supplementary Interviews Document Analysis for International Comparators Document Analysis for Published Standards and Guidelines Analysis of Risks from Multiple Sources Technical / Societal Risk Analysis Cynefin Analysis
*
A What is Risk?
A a) A local authority specific definition of strategic risk needs to be researched and developed. Aven and Renn’s (2009) definition of risk may provide a useful starting point for doing this but the definition ultimately appears to need to be organisation-specific. Being sector-specific may not be enough (Section 2.2.1), though there are some hints as to elements of it, namely: the achievement of corporate objectives; the loss of something that is valued by key stakeholders; the avoidance of blame and reputation damage; and the issues about people and their concerns (Sections 2.2.1 and 2.2.4).
B b) There is little literature on the nature … of strategic risk in local authorities (Section
2.2.4)**.
Over-Arching Aspects of Risk
C c) The extent to which strategic risk in local authorities is significantly complex has not been
established in the literature (Section 2.6.2).
Measuring Strategic Risk
D a) The literature does not address the qualitative / quantitative dichotomy of public sector
strategic risk (Section 2.7.1).
E d) The research must explore the extent to which probabilistic approaches are appropriate for strategic risk assessment. . A suitably robust and credible tool is needed to enable this important determination of simplicity, complexity and any appropriate intermediate states to be made (Section 2.7.2).
Notes: * The letters A to E are used to refer to the five gaps in knowledge in this Chapter (Gap in Knowledge A etc.)
Figure 3.1 illustrates schematically the inter-relationship between the elements of the research and the importance of the multiple sources approach adopted. This splits risk into three elements:
What is documented as happening or as a specification of what should happen; What actually happens; and
How it could and/or should be.
Critically, this recognises the difference between what is recorded and specified and what actually happens, and between these and the potential scope for improvement. No one approach could address these fully, hence the multiple sources approach adopted.
Figure 3.1: Schematic Illustration of the Multiple Sources Methodology
What is Documented as Happening or as a Specification
of what Should Happen
What Actually Happens How it Could and/or Should Be