Is “We” Singular? The Nature of Public Value

2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Prebble
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Public Value ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Managers ◽  
Democratic Discourse

Since publication two decades ago, Moore’s theory of public value has become a significant concept in public administration, especially for teaching public managers. A feature of the theory is that public value is assessed by arbiters. These arbiters include a “public as a whole,” which is a disembodied singular entity that is different from the sum of its parts. The idea of arbitration by a public as a whole is critically examined by considering its possible sources, comparison with individualistic bases for arbitration (especially democratic discourse), and exploring the implications of arbitration by the public as a whole. The conclusion is that the public as a whole is an unsuccessful concept which does not assist the theory of public value and which creates significant practical problems for practitioners by understating the degree of ambiguity that is inherent in the pursuit of public value.

Mapping public value processes

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 334-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Alford ◽  
Sophie Yates
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Child Nutrition ◽  
Process Mapping ◽  
Public Value ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Managers ◽  
Big Picture ◽  
Comprehensive Framework

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to add to the analytic toolkit of public sector practitioners by outlining a framework called Public Value Process Mapping (PVPM). This approach is designed to be more comprehensive than extant frameworks in either the private or public sectors, encapsulating multiple dimensions of productive processes. Design/methodology/approach – This paper explores the public administration and management literature to identify the major frameworks for visualising complex systems or processes, and a series of dimensions against which they can be compared. It then puts forward a more comprehensive framework – PVPM – and demonstrates its possible use with the example of Indigenous child nutrition in remote Australia. The benefits and limitations of the technique are then considered. Findings – First, extant process mapping frameworks each have some but not all of the features necessary to encompass certain dimensions of generic or public sector processes, such as: service-dominant logic; external as well internal providers; public and private value; and state coercive power. Second, PVPM can encompass the various dimensions more comprehensively, enabling visualisation of both the big picture and the fine detail of public value-creating processes. Third, PVPM has benefits – such as helping unearth opportunities or culprits affecting processes – as well as limitations – such as demonstrating causation and delineating the boundaries of maps. Practical implications – PVPM has a number of uses for policy analysts and public managers: it keeps the focus on outcomes; it can unearth a variety of processes and actors, some of them not immediately obvious; it can help to identify key processes and actors; it can help to identify the “real” culprits behind negative outcomes; and it highlights situations where multiple causes are at work. Originality/value – This approach, which draws on a number of precursors but constitutes a novel technique in the public sector context, enables the identification and to some extent the comprehension of a broader range of causal factors and actors. This heightens the possibility of imagining innovative solutions to difficult public policy issues, and alternative ways of delivering public services.

Moving On Up? Effects of Leadership Training and Intersectoral Mobility on Women’s Advancement in Danish Public Administration Management

2021 ◽  
pp. 0734371X2110548
Author(s):  
Müge Kökten Finkel ◽  
Caroline Howard Grøn ◽  
Melanie M. Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Leadership Training ◽  
Career Advancement ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
Upper Management ◽  
The Public ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
Public Managers

Women’s underrepresentation in middle and upper management is a well-documented feature of the public sector that threatens performance and legitimacy. Yet, we know far less about the factors most likely to reduce these gender inequalities. In this article, we focus on two well-understood drivers of career advancement in public administration: leadership training and intersectoral mobility. In theory, training in leadership and experience across government levels and policy areas should help both women and men to climb management ranks. We use logistic regression to test this proposition using a representative sample of 1,819 Danish public managers. We find that leadership training disproportionately benefits women, and this helps to level the playing field. However, our analyses show that differences in intersectoral mobility do not explain the gender gap in public sector management.

scholarly journals Systematic Review of Public Value

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdul Sami ◽  
Ahmad Jusoh ◽  
Khalil Md Nor ◽  
Asmara Irfan ◽  
Muhammad Imran Qureshi
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Systematic Literature Review ◽  
Value Creation ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Main Concern ◽  
Public Value ◽  
Public Managers ◽  
Public Sector Organizations

Public value is a new and important concept in the field of public administration. A large number of researchers has focused on the concept of public value during the last 10 years or so. This concept gives a new idea of public management with the theme of people’s first approach to facilitate them. Public value creation is the main concern of public managers in today’s public sector organizations. This paper presents a systematic literature review of 413 articles published on the topic of public value in Scopus index journals from 1995 to 2018. A large number of articles on public value shows the importance of the concept of public value. This systematic literature review reveals that most of the work on public value has been done in developed countries like USA, UK, Australia, and Netherland and developing countries are far behind on the research of public value.

scholarly journals Rethinking Public Administration through Managers as Leaders

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mauro Romanelli ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Organisational Change ◽  
Leadership Identity ◽  
Public Servants ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Managers ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
Public Organisation ◽  
Democratic Life

Rethinking public administration helps to drive public managers as agents of change who assume behaviours coherently with a leadership identity. Public administration is rediscovering the sustainability as a key source and goal for strategic and organisational change by promoting the organisational dimension that relies on enhancing the quality of people as human resources, strengthening both the public manager as a leader and public servants as employees who are committed and motivated to public service. Managers as leaders help to drive public administration as an organisation which is able to proceed towards future as a sustainable public organisation which develops the quality of human capital and improves performances, supports public trust and enhances democratic life. Rediscovering the organisational dimension helps to develop the leadership as identity and source for ethical and transformational behaviours of a leader, and enables public managers to assume coherent values, attitudes and behaviours developing the leadership as central identity. Today, driving public administration requires effective public managers who are able to behave as ethical and transformational leaders who motivate, support and drive the employees at work.

scholarly journals Learning to manage public service organisations better: A scenario for teaching public administration

2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-45
Author(s):  
Russ Glennon ◽  
Ian Hodgkinson ◽  
Joanne Knowles
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Collaborative Work ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Learning Organisation ◽  
Public Value ◽  
Public Managers ◽  
Conflicting Demands ◽  
Key Skills ◽  
New Knowledge

In the context of public value, it is argued that there is a need to adopt the learning organisation philosophy to manage public service organisations better. For collaborative work with public sector managers or in management education, a fictitious scenario is presented to develop the concept of the learning organisation as paradox. Faced with multiple and conflicting demands, public managers find it difficult to change organisational behaviour in response to new knowledge. The scenario demonstrates how learning organisation philosophy can be used to translate new knowledge into new behaviours. Key skills required for public managers to exploit the knowledge of all organisational members and confront the challenges of a contested concept, such as public value, are developed and comprise summarising evidence, making judgements, sharing thought processes on a contentious issue, and arriving at a consensus together. Contributions to public administration theory and practice are discussed.

scholarly journals The Five Tasks of Public Value Management: Public Value as a Programme of Administrative and Societal Democratisation

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-180
Author(s):  
Michal Sedlačko
Keyword(s):  
Public Management ◽  
Market Failure ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Value Management ◽  
Public Value ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Managers ◽  
Value Propositions ◽  
Career Options

AbstractThe aim of this essay is threefold: (1) to identify the tasks of public managers in public value management (PVM), (2) to start a debate on the relationships between autonomy, entrepreneurship and PVM from the perspective of institutional roles and management levels, and (3) to initiate a discussion about the transferability of PVM to diverse administrative systems and cultures. The public value discourse emerged in the 1990s, justifying the need for the concept through a deficit in democratic legitimacy, the delivery paradox, as well as market failure and the critique of New Public Management. Public value focuses on the ultimate purpose of the use of public resources and can thus serve to strengthen outcome legitimacy and downward accountability. Arguably, the most productive interpretation of the public value concept rests along the lines of a normative, conceptual orientation for managerial action, accompanied by a (so far somewhat sparse) set of practical tools and reasoning for public managers. Five tasks of PVM were identified: (1) conducting political management to secure legitimacy for particular value propositions; (2) leveraging public value opportunities through networks and a range of delivery mechanisms; (3) ensuring continuing democratisation through helping the realisation of politically empowered citizenship; (4) ensuring learning across multiple levels and audiences; and (5) cultivating a wider view of sustainable wellbeing for all. Regarding the applicability of PVM across various dimensions of administrative traditions and cultures, it would seem that the tasks are more compatible with some cultures and traditions than others. For instance, these roles seem more compatible with non-politicised public administrations that grant high societal status and discretion to civil servants, and provide them with generalist training and career options. One of the key open questions is under what conditions can a public value approach contribute to changes in the given public administration culture, in particular towards the development of downward accountability mechanisms in the context of democratic backsliding and constraints to bureaucratic autonomy.

scholarly journals The Potential of Design Thinking and Total Quality Management in Creating Public Value

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 285-309
Author(s):  
Rauno Vinni
Keyword(s):  
Quality Management ◽  
Total Quality Management ◽  
Design Thinking ◽  
Total Quality ◽  
Public Value ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Managers ◽  
Innovative Method ◽  
Management Concepts ◽  
Is Design

Abstract One of the most fashionable management concepts currently is Design Thinking (DT). DT is sometimes advertised as the creative and innovative method for handling wicked problems. The explosion of DT in the public sector resembles the fast adoption of Total Quality Management (TQM) a few decades ago. At first sight, DT and TQM appear mutually exclusive – the former emphasizes inventiveness, which is cherished in modern governance, while the latter stresses mechanistic solutions and seems obsolete. Yet, public managers need a clearer understanding of DT and TQM and how they relate to each other. The main aim of this paper is two analyze when public managers should employ DT and when they should use TQM in creating public value. The article compares DT and TQM and finds that they are surprisingly similar. For example, they share core values like user-centeredness, stakeholder commitment, cooperation, etc. That is not to say that DT and TQM are the same, for instance their tools are different. Still, the paper argues that the two management models could well be combined – e.g. DT could assist public managers in finding new solutions to known problems and TQM could be used to institutionalize change. This insight helps managers to make informed decisions when choosing a mix of management methods that fits their purpose best.

Emergency situations, adaptive management and national health strategies

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-33
Author(s):  
Madalina-Cristina Gogu
Keyword(s):  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Adaptive Management ◽  
National Health ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
National Strategy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Emergency Situations ◽  
Public Managers ◽  
Health Strategy

Terrible natural disasters or dangerous human activities endanger the life and health of the population. The increased frequency of these events prompts the population to exert greater pressure on public managers to rethink, to innovate, and to adapt management in the field of health to the ever-changing environment. The National Health Strategy and the National Strategy for Preventing Emergency Situations are the instruments that manage the life and health of the population in dangerous situations. Managers in the fields of health and emergency situations could develop new ways to manage strategies and public institutions by applying adaptive management in order to better protect the life and health of the population. The aim of this paper consists in presenting that, by applying strategic and adaptive management in the public sector in the fields of health and emergency situations in Romania, public managers can better serve the needs of the citizens. Keywords: public administration, national health strategy, emergency situations, adaptive management

scholarly journals An Analysis of the Level of Transparency of Federal Universities’ Websites in the South of Brazil

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Kirchner de Azevedo ◽  
Mauricio Vasconcellos Leao Lyrio ◽  
Rogerio Joao Lunkes ◽  
Luiz Alberton
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
The South ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Managers ◽  
Brazilian Legislation ◽  
The Government ◽  
South Of Brazil ◽  
Good Transparency ◽  
Made In

<p>The internet contributes for the reduction of information asymmetries between the government and the society through the transparency, because provides an environment of analysis and reflection through the information publicized by the public managers. At any level of the Public Administration, the management must be efficient and transparent, so, the general objective of this research is to verify the level of transparency of websites of the federal universities in the South of Brazil in the year of 2014 based on what the Brazilian legislation determines. Through adaptation and application of the model proposed by Nunes (2013) for measurement of the level of transparency based on the Brazilian legislation, this work seeks to providing contribution to the researches about transparency in the public sector. In the evaluation the information content, usability of the websites and data availability were considered, distributed in a set of 25 descriptors based on the Brazilian legislation. Based on the analysis made, it has been possible to find out that the group of universities analyzed showed good transparency practices. Globally three universities showed excellent transparency level; yet most universities have improvements to be made in their websites. Federal University of Santa Catarina stood out for reaching the highest transparency level among federal universities in the south. To enable the construction of a transparency map, for future works is recommended the use of the model in universities from other regions of the country.</p>

Computing in Graduate Education in Public Administration: An Assessment of Current Practices and Future Needs

1992 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey L. Brudney ◽  
Mary Maureen Brown
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Graduate Education ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Research Methodology ◽  
Graduate Level ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Managers ◽  
Future Needs ◽  
Computing Skills ◽  
Current Practices

This article addresses current practices and future needs in education in computing in graduate-level programs in public administration and affairs. Based on a survey of MPA-granting institutions, it shows that most public administration programs have incorporated computing applications into curricula beyond conventional courses in statistics and research methodology. To meet the needs of future public managers for computing skills, however, further enhancement of curricula will prove necessary. For this purpose, the article identifies a potential curriculum in computing in public administration. The curriculum is tailored to the distinctive demands and challenges of the public sector environment.

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