What Works Scotland research fellow Rosemary Anderson reflects on the relationship between decision-making and caring in public policy work.

Author: Rosemary Anderson, What Works Scotland

Date: 16 November 2015

Collaboration, participation, empowerment; the idea that public servants and the general public should work together to make policy decisions shows no sign of fading away.

The Community Empowerment Act (Scotland) is the latest in a trend towards bringing people directly affected by an issue together with specialists or experts of one description or another in the belief that this will result in better policy.

As participatory and collaborative governance becomes more and more entrenched in policy making in Scotland, how do we ensure public servants are supported and developed as emotional workers?

As part of the piece she discusses a working paper she wrote for What Works Scotland summarising some of her findings which relate to civil servants in particular.

Read the post on the What Works Scotland blog