8. RISK, REFORM AND ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE: THE CASE OF IRS TAX SYSTEMS MODERNIZATION

One of the most familiar nostrums of the public management reform literature is that public managers must be risk takers (e.g. Gore, 1993). As is so often the case with prescriptions for public management reform, there is much more advice about risk-taking, its merits and demerits, than there is research on its the incidence, causes and effects of public management risk-taking. Only a handful of studies have actually provided systematic evidence about public agencies’ risk-taking (e.g. Bellante & Link, 1981; Berman & West, 1998; Bozeman & Kingsley, 1998) and some of these studies point to the complexities of conceptualizing and measuring public management risk.