Factors influencing public sector decisions and the achievement of sustainable development in the State of Victoria, Australia

Abstract

Public decisions impact each of our lives, now and into the future. We entrust them to politicians and civil servants, expecting our elected and paid representatives to act in the public interest and to deliver on the promises they make to us. This thesis explores what has led to the arguably limited achievement of sustainable development by public decision-makers, despite three decades of increasing international, national, and subnational commitments to it.

Thirty-five interviews and a survey (n=98) of current or former Victorian Public Sector employees provide insights into public decision-making. Inductive thematic and statistical analyses across case studies and cohorts, network mapping, and systems thinking are applied to draw and validate conclusions stemming from those insights.

Forty influences, ranging from the personal characteristics of individual decision-makers to the definition, availability and use of evidence, are found to have the potential to both help and hinder the achievement of desired public outcomes. Regression and distributional analyses show that the importance of these influences varies, depending on context and perspective. For example: participants whose work focused on achieving sustainable development have quite different influence importance hierarchies compared to their more general decision-making focused peers; and, participants with a more 'upbeat' approach focus more on influences individuals can impact than their less 'upbeat' colleagues. Network mapping of the linkages between influences illustrates the importance of interconnected approaches to their management, and a theory on the level of control individuals can exert upon each is proposed.

Additionally, considerations of sustainable development are found to be influenced by: the presence of reinforcing feedback loops within the decision-making system; apparently limited awareness of the ability to change or evolve the system; inconsistent goal definition (interviewees provide seven definitions of sustainable development); and heuristics (a third of participants are unaware of the Sustainable Development Goals, and of those indicating awareness a number demonstrate poorer understanding than they self-assess).

Seventy-eight percent of participants indicate people have more influence upon public outcomes than formal frameworks, suggesting the latter are of limited value. Other solutions discussed include: tweaking existing processes to encourage thinking and awareness of sustainable development; highlighting individual's agency; applying the understandings of system leverage points gained herein; and, a suite of interviewee ideas for enhancing public decision effectiveness or longevity.

This thesis concludes that public decision-makers recognise unmet public expectations and do their best to address them. But, they are often overwhelmed by the system's complexity and underestimate the impact they can reasonably have upon it, leaving many of them feeling as frustrated and powerless as the public they endeavour to serve. However, it also suggests that public decision makers who believe they can personally drive change, are more likely to do so and that greater self-efficacy within the public sector will lead to a lessening of the gap between public aspirations and delivered public outcomes. The identified influences and solutions, presented amidst a previously unavailable and rich set of insights and other factors identified in the literature, provide a basis on which to enhance these practices. Further, it is suggested that these conclusions and the influences identified apply not only to sustainable development in Victoria but to many other public decision-making issues and geographic scales, broadening the potential application of the findings.