Samenvatting literatuur Perspectieven op Publieke Vraagstukken:
Voor het vak Perspectieven op Publieke Vraagstukken (PPV) van de minor bestuur en
organisatiewetenschappen aan de Universiteit Utrecht, heb ik een samenvatting gemaakt
van alle verplichte artikelen die nodig waren voor het tentamen. De artikelen zijn geordend
per week van het blok. In totaal zijn er 14 artikelen samengevat en de samenvatting is
uitgebreider dan normaal omdat het om een openboek tentamen gaat. Let op! De Engelse
artikelen zijn ook in het Engels samengevat! Belangrijke begrippen zijn dikgedrukt.
De artikelen die zijn samengevat zijn:
- Head, B.W. & Alford, J. (2015). Wicked Problems: Implications for Public Policy and Management,
Administration & Society, 47(6), 711-739. Verplichte lectuur: pp. 711-722.
- Bryson, J. M., Crosby, B. C., & Bloomberg, L. (2014). Public value governance: Moving beyond traditional
public administration and the new public management. Public administration review, 74(4), 445-456.
Verplichte lectuur: pp. 445-450 (enkel de alinea’s over Moore op p. 450).
- Moore, M. H. (2000). Managing for value: Organizational strategy in for-profit, nonprofit, and governmental
organizations. Nonprofit and voluntary sector quarterly, 29(1_suppl), 183-204.
- Hood, C. (1991). A public management for all seasons?. Public administration, 69(1), 3-19.
- Provan, K. G. & Lemaire, R. H. (2012). Core Concepts and Key Ideas for Understanding Public Sector
Organizational Networks: Using Research to Inform Scholarship and Practice. Public Administration Review,
72(5), 638-648.
- Pless, N.M. & Maak, T. (2004). Building an Inclusive Diversity Culture: Principles, processes and practice.
Journal of Business Ethics 54, p. 129-147
- Weick, K. E., Sutcliffe, K. M., & Obstfeld, D. (2005). Organizing and the process of sensemaking.
Organization science, 16(4), 409-421. Verplichte lectuur: pp. 409-413
- Boselie, P., Leisink, P., & Vandenabeel, W. (2011). Human Resources Management. In Noordegraaf, M.,
Geuijen, K. & A. Meijer (Red). Handboek Public Management. Den Haag: Boom Lemma, pp. 315-337.
- Knies, E., & Leisink, P. (2018). People management in the public sector. In Brewster & Cedin (eds.) HRM in
mission driven organizations (pp. 15-46). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
- De Bruijn (2011, 2014) Framing. Over de macht van taal in de politiek. Atlas contact. Hoofdstuk 1, verplichte
literatuur: pp. 20-41
- De Bruijn (2011, 2014) Framing. Over de macht van taal in de politiek. Atlas contact.
- Hoofdstuk 2, verplichte literatuur: pp. 54-72.
- Scholten, P., & Penninx, R. (2016). The multilevel governance of migration and integration. In Integration
processes and policies in Europe (pp. 91-108). Springer, Cham.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-21674-4_6
- Kersbergen, K. Van, & Waarden, F. Van. (2004). ‘Governance’as a bridge between disciplines: Cross‐
disciplinary inspiration regarding shifts in governance and problems of governability, accountability and
legitimacy. European journal of political research, 43(2), 143-171
Week 47:
Head & Alford:
Head, B.W. & Alford, J. (2015). Wicked Problems: Implications for Public Policy and
Management, Administration & Society, 47(6), 711-739. Verplichte lectuur: pp. 711-722.
Government organizations are good at implementing policies and delivering services that are
relatively standardized, routine, and high volume. They seem to be less equipped to respond
effectively to nonroutine and nonstandard service challenges. This is especially true of what
have been called “wicked problems” – those that are complex, unpredictable, open ended,
or intractable. Wicked problems seem incomprehensible and resistant to solution. There are
degrees of “wickedness,” which can be understood by reference to multiple dimensions.
While conclusive “solutions” are very rare, it is possible to frame partial, provisional courses
of action against wicked problems.
The nature of wicked problems
Analyses drawing critical attention to the significance of complex policy problems, and the
unforeseen consequences of policy intervention in areas of risk and uncertainty, emerged
during the 1970s. These analyses reflected widespread dissatisfaction with rational-technical
approaches to decision making, planning, and implementation. Rational-technical
approaches assume that efficient and effective achievement of objectives can follow from
adequate information, carefully specified goals and targets, and choice of appropriate
1
,methods. However, frameworks based on rational-technical decision making came under
increasing fire in the 1970s and 1980s. A general critique was launched from the perspective
of systems theory, according to which social and economic problems cannot be understood
and addressed in isolation. Every problem interacts with other problems and is therefore part
of a system of interrelated problems, a system of problems (a mess). The solution to a mess
can seldom be obtained by independently solving each of the problems of which it is
composed. Efforts to deal separately with such aspects of urban life as health and education
seem to aggravate the situation. Second, the major social issues of modern life are grounded
in value perspectives, and gathering more information for scientific analysis is insufficient to
understand and resolve major problems. The development of ever more comprehensive
scientific expertise could not resolve the many difficult policy problems of the modern era.
These should be understood as grounded in competing value frameworks rather than arising
from gaps in scientific knowledge. Third, within the planning and design disciplines, a radical
critique of expert-driven rational comprehensive planning became widespread. The days of
solving major problems through an “engineering” approach have ended. Modern society is
now seen as pluralistic and not homogeneous, and is not amenable to top-down general
solutions (Rittel & Webber’s). Social groups increasingly exhibit important differences in
aspirations, values, and perspectives that confound the possibility of clear and agreed
solutions. Modern problems of “social or policy planning” are different from the technical
puzzles tackled by the physical and engineering sciences. The latter problems are typically
“tame” or “benign” in the sense that the elements of the puzzle (e.g., a mathematics or
engineering problem) are definable and solutions are verifiable. By contrast, modern social
problems are generally “ill defined,” and rely on political judgments rather than scientific
certitudes. In this sense, most major public policy problems are “wicked”, they are inherently
resistant to a clear definition and an agreed solution. Rittel and Webber identified 10 primary
characteristics of wicked problems:
1. There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem.
2. Wicked problems have no “stopping rule” (i.e., no definitive solution).
3. Solutions to wicked problems are not true or false, but good or bad.
4. There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem.
5. Every (attempted) solution to a wicked problem is a “one-shot operation”; the results
cannot be readily undone, and there is no opportunity to learn by trial and error.
6. Wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or an exhaustively describable) set of
potential solutions, nor is there a well-described set of permissible operations that may be
incorporated into the plan.
7. Every wicked problem is essentially unique.
8. Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem.
9. The existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained in
numerous ways.
10. The planner has no “right to be wrong” (i.e., there is no public tolerance of experiments
that fail).
Challenges of wicked problems
The role of the modern state has expanded greatly during the last century. In the 1970s and
1980s, some political leaders were attempting to reduce the “overloaded” role of government,
and to lower community expectations about the capacity of governments to address a wide
range of major issues. Rather than further extend public regulation to solve problems, they
advocated greater responsibility for individuals and communities, and greater use of market
mechanisms. However, in recent decades, some political leaders have remained determined
to undertake large initiatives to address complex problems – even though such interventions
are based on imperfect knowledge, and even though the outcomes could take years.
Concerns about wicked problems have also arisen in relation to dealing with disasters and
crises that throw into relief the (in-)capacities of governmental systems to prepare,
coordinate, and rapidly mobilize resources. Kettl argued for the adoption of
2
,“nontraditional/adaptive/networked strategies” to address nonroutine problems. The
argument that exceptional events, such as disasters, may require new types of policy
response may be more plausible than the claim by Rittel and Webber four decades ago that
new approaches would become necessary to deal with fundamental aspects of modern life
that tend to promote complexity, interconnectedness, pluralism, and uncertainty. Roberts
suggests that a heightened awareness of value differences has emerged in parallel with the
expansion of democracy, market economies, international travel, and social exchanges.
Many problems are marked by deep-rooted disagreements about the nature and significance
of particular problems and possible solutions. The diverse sources of policy divergence on
complex value-laden issues underline the point that there is no “root cause” of complexity,
diversity, uncertainty, and ambiguity. Hence, there is no root cause of “wickedness” and no
single best approach to tackling such problems. If it is claimed that the fundamental cause of
wicked problems is stakeholder disagreement (conflicting values and perceptions), this claim
already implies a preferred “solution” pathway of reducing conflict through dialogue. Thus,
some analysts favour participatory and dialogue-based approaches to goal setting, planning,
and strategizing. If, however, it is claimed that the fundamental problem is insufficient
knowledge about social processes, the implied pathway is further research and data
collection to fill knowledge gaps and improve the information base for decision makers and
stakeholders. Thus, problem definition tends to imply a preferred solution. Some caution is
therefore required with any proposed methods or approaches for addressing wicked
problems, as they are likely to be provisional and incomplete in various degrees.
Wicked problems are generally seen as associated with social pluralism (multiple interests
and values of stakeholders), institutional complexity (the context of interorganizational
cooperation and multilevel governance), and scientific uncertainty (fragmentation and gaps
in reliable knowledge). Although every “solution” for dealing with a wicked problem is
necessarily open to further interrogation and adaptation, this is no bad thing. Robust
evaluation frameworks are not always in good shape for helping public officials understand
successive attempts to address social issues (poverty, crime etc.), and different value
perspectives on many issues preclude consensus formation. Important learning and
evaluation processes emerge from the adaptive management experience of working at
multiple levels with a range of policy instruments. The process of democratic political debate
provides a robust testing ground for sifting the practical merits of options and for assessing
support for policy choices.
Complexity, Diversity and Uncertainty
It is useful to identify a spectrum of problem types, which would help to explain the features
typical of wicked problems, and throw light on the differential features and intensities of
different problems. Not all problems are simply tame or simply wicked (Heifetz and Roberts).
Heifetz proposed a typology of different problem situations confronting managers, ranked in
ascending order of difficulty. Type 1 situations are those where both the definition of the
problem and the likely solution are clear to the decision maker (e.g., the manager or policy
expert). These situations require technical work on the part of decision makers and those
subject to their decisions. Type 2 situations are those where the definition of the problem is
clear, but the solution is not – typically because the relevant cause-and-effect relationships
are hard to discern – and therefore learning and discussion are required by both the
governmental managers and the stakeholders they lead. In Type 3 situations, both the
problem definition and the solution are unclear, and more extensive learning and discussion
are required for all concerned. Type 1 situations constitute “tame” problems, whereas Type 3
situations, and perhaps many Type 2 ones, will contain some features of “wicked” problems.
Tame problems are those currently regarded as capable of standard or routine solutions.
They have low levels of complexity and disputation and thus low perceived levels of
uncertainty. Over a period of time, some of these problems may become controversial or
more complex and thus require other approaches and solutions. Tackling key challenges
through nonstandard processes of adaptive management and networked governance
3
,becomes more important as problems exhibit higher levels of uncertainty and stakeholder
contestation, for example, where key actors take divergent approaches to problem definitions
and possible solutions.
Policy literature suggests that what counts as a problem and what counts as a solution are
heavily shaped by institutional history and stakeholder perspectives. The ideas and practices
underpinning different views of policy problems and solutions are only partially shaped by
scientific knowledge. In a world of constrained or “bounded” rationality, lack of consensus
reflects differences in values and experience; appeals to scientific expertise will seldom
generate acceptable solutions. The scientific research sector attempts to improve the
knowledge bases to better understand complex patterns of causality and the
interdependence of issues. However, the authority of “science” has itself been compromised
in the modern context of social media and values-based political debate. Provision of a more
secure knowledge base is one part of the challenge of dealing with ambiguity, uncertainty,
and value disagreements. There are cognitive-analytical challenges and communicative,
political, and institutional challenges to building a more shared understanding. As the number
and variety of actors, groups, and organizational units involved in a complex issue increases,
the need for high-quality management/leadership processes becomes crucial. From the
decision maker’s point of view, diversity of either actors or institutional locations poses similar
difficulties. Both entail a range of perspectives, values, and knowledge bases relevant to the
issue. They all have expectations of the decision maker, and they all constitute or mobilize
potential sources of information, permission, or resources. These divergent contributions
need to be shared to identify/define problems and consider appropriate responses to them.
The more complex and diverse the situation, the more wicked the problem. For the decision
maker, complexity and diversity create higher levels of uncertainty or ambiguity. The forms
they take will be tied to a range of factors – institutional arrangements, group behaviour,
issue histories, research findings, media biases etc. There are different kinds of wicked
problems, and therefore different types of appropriate responses. There is more to tackling
wicked problems than engaging in a process of collaboration (characteristic response of
governments and policy makers). We argue for a more pragmatic approach, in which the
type of response is tailored to the types of wickedness the problem seems to exhibit. In the
absence of clear and definitive solutions “You don’t so much ‘solve’ a wicked problem as you
help stakeholders negotiate shared understanding and shared meaning about the problem
and its possible solutions. The objective of the work is coherent action, not final solution”
(Conklin). The initial challenge for public-sector managers may be establishing enabling
conditions whereby provisional solutions can be discussed and decided. Public decision
makers may occasionally claim to offer solutions to wicked problems (by redefining them or
by advocating a preferred policy instrument such as markets to handle some of the “messy”
trade-offs).
Public Management’s shortcomings in dealing with wicked problems
Tackling wicked problems is challenging because of their inherent complexity and because
the mechanisms of public-sector management tend to complicate and hamstring efforts to
resolve such issues. These structures and processes have evolved over time, with each new
phase overlaying rather than completely eliminating its predecessor. Hierarchical forms of
organization and systems of control, focused on input monitoring and process compliance,
substantially limited the opportunities to think expansively about policy issues of the type that
might be thrown up by wicked problems. The tendency to recruit administrative employees at
entry level and retain them in the same organization, and to foster specialization in areas of
professional expertise, made each department a cultural fortress. It tended to create “silos”
or “stovepipes” demarcating functional areas within organizations (Wilson). This was
reinforced by a budgetary process that featured line-item appropriations of inputs. The
combination of traditional bureaucracy and interest-group politics led to a “muddling through”
approach (Lindblom) that could not address the big issues in a comprehensive way. The sets
4
,of practices introduced from the 1980s generally termed “New Public Management” (NPM)
were designed in part to address some of these shortcomings of traditional administration.
NPM practices have generally been ill-suited to dealing with wicked problems. This is so
whether referring to its initial intraorganizational focus – sometimes abelled “managerialism”
or “corporate management” – or its more contractualist focus entailing purchaser – provider
splits, outsourcing, and privatization. Managerialism (managing for results) entails orienting
the public-sector organization’s structure, coordination mechanisms, financial management,
staffing, and rewards toward the achievement of results, broadly conceived as either sets of
program purposes or as groups of people served by programs. It was modelled on the
multidivisional form of leading private-sector corporations, each with headquarters
overseeing business units, which it controlled through setting and monitoring performance
outcomes. Staffing at senior levels focused on general managerial skills rather than
professional or technical content knowledge. Budgeting systems were typically oriented to
appropriations by programs. Central to managerialism has been a rational-technical
approach to making decisions, adopting corporate strategy methods from the private sector.
Initially, this took the form of rational comprehensive planning – the very phenomenon to
which Rittel and Webber’s paper was a response. It entailed formulating corporate objectives
for the organization, delineating discrete programs related to those objectives, setting out
clear outcomes for each program, drawing up action plans for achieving those outcomes,
and measuring the extent of achievement at regular intervals. This model assumes that each
public organization has settled goals, a supportive political environment, and control over the
resources and capabilities necessary to deliver on the goals – none of which apply in the
presence of wicked problems.
It is not only its decision-making approach that limits the capacity of managerialism to
grapple with wicked problems but it is also the structures and processes through which it
implements those decisions. To the extent that performance-based managerialism moves
away from a focus on inputs and processes, and focuses attention further down the chain of
“program logic” toward outcomes, managerialism potentially allows flexibilities in finding
alternative means of achieving the desired results. The corporate management framework
tends to isolate from each other those programs that may actually have subterranean
connections in respect of certain wicked problems. This fragmentation manifests itself in
tensions between program-based subcultures, competing policy priorities, and turf wars
within and between agencies and was intensified by contractualism. First, contract-based
service-delivery models tended to shift the focus back along the “program logic” chain from
outcomes to outputs. Prescribing a particular output as the means for achieving an outcome
tends to limit the scope for imagining other means for doing so. Second, contractualism
entailed separating service-delivery functions from those devoted to formulating policy,
deciding what services were needed, and arranging with providers to deliver them. This
“policy/delivery” separation, or “purchaser-provider” split, also had the effect of fragmenting
knowledge and understanding about factors that might cause or at least influence wicked
problems. Third, contractualism entailed the establishment of competition between service
providers. Designed to drive efficiency and effectiveness, this also had the effect of
undermining cooperation among those who might collectively have significant information or
insights relating to wicked problems. Competition gave them an incentive to withhold rather
than share knowledge. These impediments to addressing wicked problems are reinforced by
some of the systems and controls that have also accompanied NPM. For example, individual
employment contracts and performance-based remuneration of staff, especially of managers,
also reinforce this tendency, enjoining employees to give priority to their silo’s concerns.
However, the greater emphasis on employing more generalist managers, and the increased
flexibility of movement of staff across public agencies, may foster broader knowledge and
experience more likely to be conducive to thinking laterally about the types of issues that
involve wicked problems.
5
,The conventional structures and systems of the public sector are not scoped to address the
tasks of conceptualizing, mapping, and responding to wicked problems. Project management
for tackling wicked problems through long-term targeted interventions would require a
substantial and unaccustomed degree of flexibility in the structures and systems of public
governance. More generally, addressing wicked problems calls for public officials to forge
new ways of thinking, leading, managing, and organizing that recognize the complexity of the
issues and processes, and that make new demands not only on their own organizations but
also on other relevant actors and institutions in their environments.
Strategies for dealing with wicked problems
The practical challenges of tackling ‘wicked problems’ requires attention to complexity,
uncertainty, and disagreement. Calls for “more research” or “more science” to address
knowledge gaps are not a sufficient response, even though better information is obviously a
valuable contribution both for “evidence-informed” policy making and for increasing the
scope of consensus. Most widespread is some form of collaborative or networked
management, wherein managers work across boundaries with others who have relevant
knowledge and a stake in the complex issue they are grappling with. This widespread focus
on “collaboration” as a process solution to wicked problems is important but requires other
measures. It is not always the primary or the best option among possible responses to
wickedness, primarily because collaboration alone does not necessarily address all aspects
of the complexity challenges. We also consider two further approaches: broader ways of
thinking about variables, options, and linkages; and new models of leadership that better
appreciate the distributed nature of information, interests, and power. We also include a brief
consideration of the secondary changes to management structures and processes that might
support these strategies. Not only is each of these strategies important in itself in tackling
wicked problems but the literature also high- lights the important role of the interaction
between them.
Bryson:
Bryson, J. M., Crosby, B. C., & Bloomberg, L. (2014). Public value governance: Moving
beyond traditional public administration and the new public management. Public
administration review, 74(4), 445-456. Verplichte lectuur: pp. 445-450 (enkel de alinea’s over
Moore op p. 450).
A new public administration movement is emerging to move beyond traditional public
administration and New Public Management and it is a response to the challenges of a
networked, multi-sector, no-one-wholly-in-charge world and to the shortcomings of previous
public administration approaches. Here values beyond efficiency and effectiveness – and
especially democratic values – are prominent. Government has a special role to play as a
guarantor of public values, but citizens as well as businesses and non-profit organizations
also are important as active public problem solvers. The new approach does not have
a consensually agreed name. Now values beyond efficiency and effectiveness are pursued,
debated, challenged, and evaluated in the emerging approach. The emerging approach
reemphasizes and brings to the fore value-related concerns of previous eras that were
always present, but not dominant. This renewed attention to a broader array of values,
especially to values associated with democracy, makes it obvious why questions related to
the creation of public value, public values more generally, and the public sphere have risen
to prominence.
An emerging view of public administration
Public administration thinking and practice have always responded to new challenges and
the shortcomings of what has come before. The new approach highlights four important
stances that together represent a response to current challenges and old shortcomings:
1. An emphasis on public value and public values.
2. Recognition that government has a special role as a guarantor of public values.
6
,3. A belief in the importance of public management broadly conceived, and of service to and
for the public.
4. A heightened emphasis on citizenship and democratic and collaborative governance.
These concerns, of course, are not new to public administration, but their emerging
combination is the latest response to what Dwight Waldo called the periodically changing
“material and ideological background.”
Traditional Public Administration: Traditional public administration arose in the US in the
late 1900s and matured by the mid-twentieth century as a response to some conditions
(Waldo). These included the challenges of industrialization, urbanization, the rise of the
modern corporation, faith in science, belief in progress, and concern over major market
failures. Successful experience with government responses to WWI, the Great Depression,
and WWII helped solidify support for traditional public administration and built strong trust in
government as an agent for the good of all. In its idealized form, politics and administration
were quite separate. Goals were determined in the first instance by elected officials and only
secondarily refined by technical experts in response to political direction. Government
agencies were the primary deliverers of public value through the way they designed and
implemented politically defined objectives. Efficiency in government operations was the
preeminent value. Citizens were viewed as voters, clients, or constituents. Of course,
traditional public administration in practice was always more deeply enmeshed in politics
than its idealized form would suggest, and government agencies were themselves prone to
failure.
New Public Management: NPM became the dominant approach to public administration in
the 1980s/1990s (Hood). In the U.S. the change was marked
by Osborne and Gaebler’s best-selling book Reinventing Government and the Clinton
Administration’s National Performance Review (Gore). NPM arose out of a concern with
government failures, a belief in the efficacy and efficiency of markets, a belief in economic
rationality, and a push away from large, centralized government agencies toward devolution
and privatization. Public managers are urged to “steer, not row.” They steer by determining
objectives, or what should be done, and by catalysing service delivery, or how it should be
done (rowing), via their choice of a particular “tool” or combination of tools (markets, taxes,
subsidies etc.) for achieving the objectives. Markets and competition – often among actors
from different sectors – are the preferred way of delivering government services in the most
efficient and effective way to recipients seen as “customers,” not citizens. Public managers
should be empowered and freed from constrictions so that they can be “entrepreneurial” and
“manage for results.” In practice, managers often face the worst of circumstances in which
they are accountable for results, but not allowed to manage for results. While the challenges
that prompted traditional public administration and NPM have not disappeared, new material
conditions and challenges have emerged. They centre on how to govern, not just manage, in
increasingly diverse and complex societies facing increasingly complex problems that have
challenged not just governments, but businesses, non-profits, and civil society generally.
The emerging approach: the responses to these new challenges do not yet constitute a
coherent whole, but the outlines are becoming clear. Citizens, citizenship, and democracy
are central to the new approach, which comes back to Waldo’s interest in a democratic
theory of administration. The approach advocates more contingent, pragmatic kinds of
rationality, going beyond the formal rationalities of Herbert Simon’s “administrative man” and
microeconomics’ “economic man.” Citizens are seen as quite capable of engaging in
deliberative problem solving that allows them to develop a public spiritedness. Scholars see
public value emerging from broadly inclusive dialogue and deliberation. The conversation
includes community members from multiple sectors because, “public values and public value
are not the exclusive province of government, nor is government the only set of institutions
having public value obligations, though clearly government has a special role as guarantor of
public values” (Bozeman). The approach encompasses what Boyte terms “public work,”
7
,meaning self-organized, sustained efforts by a mix of people who solve common problems
and create things, material or symbolic, of lasting civic value, while developing civic learning
and capacity as part of the process. This work can engage many different kinds of people,
including public-spirited managers from across sectors and citizens. Citizens thus move
beyond their roles as voters, clients, constituents, customers, or poll responders to becoming
problem-solvers, co-creators, and governors actively engaged in producing what is valued by
the public and good for the public. Budd captures the importance of work in general for the
creation of public value, and the special role that labour unions have often played in its
creation. Government agencies can be a convener, catalyst, and collaborator, sometimes
steering, rowing, partnering, and staying out of the way. The way government’s key
objectives are set changes. In traditional public administration, elected officials set goals and
implementation is up to public servants, overseen by elected officials’ and senior
administrators. In NPM elected officials still set goals. Managers then manage inputs and
outputs in a way that ensures economy and responsiveness to customers. In the new
approach both elected officials and public managers are charged with creating public value
so that what the public most cares about is addressed effectively and what is good for the
public is pursued. This change raises questions of democratic accountability. The change is
essentially a recognition that managers have always played an important role in goal setting
because of the advice they give to elected officials and the need to act in the face of often
ambiguous policy direction. The full range of democratic and constitutional values is relevant.
Policy makers and public managers are also encouraged to consider the full array of
alternative delivery mechanisms and choose among them based on pragmatic criteria. This
often means helping build cross-sector collaborations and engaging citizens to achieve
mutually agreed objectives. Public managers’ role goes well beyond that in traditional public
administration or NPM; they are presumed able to help create and guide networks of
deliberation and delivery and help maintain and enhance the overall effectiveness, capacity,
and accountability of the system. The nature of discretion also changes. In traditional public
administration, public managers have limited discretion; NPM encourages wide discretion in
meeting entrepreneurial and performance targets. In the emerging approach, discretion is
needed, but is constrained by law, democratic and constitutional values, and a broad
approach to accountability. Accountability becomes multi-faceted, and not just hierarchical
(traditional public administration) or more market-driven (NPM), since public servants must
attend to law, community values, political norms, professional standards, and citizen
interests. In the emerging multi-sector collaborative environment, no one sector has a
monopoly on public service ethos, although government plays a special role; plus, there is
less scepticism about government and a less strong preference for markets and customer
service.
Public administration’s contribution to the democratic process is also different. In both
traditional public administration and NPM managers are not very directly involved in the
democratic process. In the emerging approach government delivers dialogue and catalyses
and responds to active citizenship in pursuit of what the public values and what is good for
the public. The emerging approach is partly descriptive of current and emerging practices,
partly normative in its prescriptions regarding the role of government and public managers,
and partly hopeful as a response to the challenges posed by a “changing material and
ideological background.” In contrast to traditional public administration and NPM, the
emerging approach often looks ambiguous, unevenly grounded theoretically, relatively
untested, and lacking in clear guidance for practice. One thing is clear and that is the
fundamental importance in the emerging approach of understanding what is meant by public
value, public values, and the public sphere. Progress must be made on clarifying, measuring,
and assessing these concepts if the new approach is gain added traction.
Value, Public Value, Public Values and the Public Sphere
The dictionary definition of value as “relative worth, utility, or importance” of something
(Merriam-Webster) leaves open a number of questions that reappear in the current debate
8
,over public values, public value, and the public sphere. These questions concern at least the
following: (1) whether the objects of value are subjective psychological states, or objective
states of the world; (2) whether value is intrinsic, extrinsic, or relational; (3) whether
something is valuable for its own sake or as a means to something else; (4) whether there
are hierarchies of values; (5) who does the valuing; (6) how the valuing is done; and (7)
against what criteria the object of value is measured. The public value literature distinguishes
among: (1) public values, which are many; (2) creating public value defined as producing
what is either valued by the public, is good for the public, including adding to the public
sphere, or both, as assessed against various public value criteria; and (3) the public sphere
or public realm within which public values and value are developed and played out.
Barry Bozeman on Public Values
Bozeman writes that a society’s public values are those providing normative consensus
about:
1. The rights, benefits, and prerogatives to which citizens should (and should not) be
entitled.
2. The obligations of citizens to society, the state, and one another.
3. The principles on which governments and policies should be based.
What Bozeman terms public values failure occurs when neither the market nor the public
sector provides goods and services required to achieve public values, which are
operationalized in terms of a set of eight criteria, e.g., political processes and social cohesion
should be sufficient to ensure effective communication and processing of public values; and
sufficient transparency exists to permit citizens to make informed judgments. Public value
creation is the extent to which public values criteria are met, where these are some
combination of input, process, output, and outcome measures. Public values for Bozeman
thus are measurable, although there can be disagreements about how the values are to be
measured. One implication is that analysts, citizens, and policy makers should focus on what
public values are, and on ways in which institutions and processes are necessary to forge
agreement on and achieve public values in practice. Bozeman’s approach is both positive,
when he asks what the normative consensus on values is, and normative, when he argues
that public values failures should be corrected. He is silent on the role of the non-profit
sector and on the public sphere more generally; on the rights, responsibilities, or weights to
be given to non-citizens; and on the role and importance of power in contests over public
values. Regarding the effects of political power, Jacobs believes that in the U.S. context
Bozeman underestimates the extent of dissensus, the disproportionate influence of affluent
citizens and organized interests, and the extent to which governing structures favour inaction
and drift.
Mark Moore on Creating Public Value
Whereas Bozeman focuses on the policy or societal level, Mark Moore focuses on public
managers. He is concerned about devaluing of government and public managers in an era of
economic individualism and market ascendency. He conceived of public value as the public
management equivalent of shareholder value and seeks a persuasive rhetoric and an
approach to discerning, championing, and achieving public value –creating public value.
Public value primarily results from government performance and he believes that citizens
want from their governments some combination of the following that together encompass
public value:
1. High-performing service-oriented public bureaucracies.
2. Public organizations that are efficient and effective in achieving desired social outcomes.
3. Public organizations that operate justly and fairly, and lead to just and fair conditions in
the society at large.
Moore’s definition of public value is vaguer than Bozeman’s, but it highlights reasonably
specific public values: efficiency, effectiveness, socially and politically sanctioned desired
outcomes, procedural justice, and substantive justice. Moore’s definition of public value can
encompass input, process, output, and outcome measures. Moore develops the
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, philosophical foundations of his approach to public value as a prelude to establishing what
he calls “public value accounting.” He makes three assertions:
1. A public collectively defined through democratic processes is the appropriate arbiter of
public value when collectively owned assets of government are being deployed.
2. Collectively owned assets include not only government money, but also state authority.
3. Assessing the value of government production relies on an aggregation of costs and
benefits broadly conceived; but also on collective determinations concerning the welfare
of others, duties to others, and conceptions of a good and just society.
Moore uses these premises to develop a public value account. On the benefit side is the
achievement of collectively valued outcomes, while on the cost side are the costs of using
public authority and collectively owned assets. Moore argues that public managers should
use the strategic triangle. Strategy must be (1) aimed at achieving something that is
substantively valuable (must constitute public value); (2) legitimate and politically
sustainable; and (3) operationally and administratively feasible. Moore is speaking primarily
to current and prospective public managers in a democratic society and secondarily to their
elected leaders. Like Bozeman, an implication of Moore’s work is the need for a healthy
democracy with supporting institutions and the processes necessary to forge agreement on
and achieve public values in practice. For Moore, like Bozeman, public value generally refers
to objective states of the world that can be measured and he also sees public value as
extrinsic and intrinsic to the functioning of an effective democratic polity. Again, like
Bozeman, something being evaluated may be deemed to hold inherent value or may be seen
as a means to something else. Unlike Bozeman, Moore does assume a hierarchy of values
in which public organizational effectiveness, efficiency, accountability, justness, and fairness
in the context of democratic governance are prime values. Ultimately elected officials and the
citizenry do the valuing (can be shown via the public value account), but public managers
also play an important role.
Rhodes and Wanna have criticized Moore. Not clear is whether their approach is “a
paradigm, a concept, a model, a heuristic device, or even a story. As a result, it is all things
to all people”. They believe Moore downplays the importance of politics and elected officials,
overly emphasizes the role of public managers, and trusts too much in public organizations,
private sector experience, and the virtues of public servants. Alford emphasizes Moore’s
strategic triangle that sees the authorizing environment as placing “a legitimate limit on the
public manager’s autonomy to shape what is meant by public value” and also believes
Rhodes and Wanna operate out of an “old” public administration paradigm that draws a
sharp distinction between politics and administration and thus ignore the fact that political
appointees and civil servants often have considerable leeway to influence policy and
decisions. Dahl and Soss also have criticism at Moore’s conception of creating public value.
By posing public value as an analogue to shareholder value, seeing democratic engagement
in primarily instrumental terms, and viewing public value as something that is produced,
Moore actually mimics the very neoliberal rationality they seek to resist and runs the risk of
furthering neoliberalism’s de-democratizing and market-enhancing consequences. Public
managers might unwittingly be agents of “downsizing democracy”. In addition, Jacobs
believes Moore’s hopeful view of public management can be Pollyannaish, given sharply
divided public opinion on many issues, intensely partisan politics, the power of organized
interests, and the many veto points built into governance arrangements. Clearly, public
managers are constrained in a democratic society, but there are also many examples of
enterprising, public value-producing activities that demonstrate public managers can in fact
be active agents in creating public value. The public value literature will need to explore more
the conceptual, political, organizational, managerial, and other limits on public managers
seeking to create public value in particular circumstances.
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