In recent administrative and organizational literature much attention has been paid to values that guide organizational and managerial behaviour in the public and private domain. Comparative empirical research efforts, however, are sparse. This article reports the results of a comparative empirical survey of 382 managers from a variety of public and private sector organizations in The Netherlands. Contrary to much recent literature that presupposes the intermixing or convergence of value systems guiding governance in different kinds of organizations, the results of this study show two distinct and relatively classical value systems for government and business as well as a ' common core ' of important organizational qualities. These are accountability, expertise, reliability, effi ciency and effectiveness, all of which are considered crucial in both public and private sector organizations. Additional analysis shows that value preferences are primarily attached to sector rather than to age, gender, working experience, or previous employment in the other sector.

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This article examines experienced differences in values between employees in the public and private sector. To elucidate them, the authors interviewed 30 employees of the public sector previously employed in the private sector and 30 employees of the private sector previously employed in the public sector, all of them in the Netherlands. The major conclusion is that the values of profitability, competitiveness, and customer orientation have a greater influence on business decisions; in public organizations, values such as legitimacy, lawfulness, accountability, and impartiality play a larger role. However, great differences exist among the organizations within each sector.

The COVID‐19 pandemic is seen as the biggest crisis since World War II. What started out as a public health issue has quickly morphed into a political, economic, and societal crisis of epic proportions. Administrative capacity is a major factor in determining whether societies will emerge from this unprecedented situation with resilience and optimism or despair and disconnectedness, and whether trust in government will increase or decrease. Autonomous and competent public managers are key producers of such administrative capacity. This essay addresses those public managers, the unsung administrative heroes leading us through times of crisis from behind the scenes. Translating the state of the art in public administration literature, with a particular emphasis on publications in this journal, into accessible practitioner recommendations, it identifies three key competencies paramount to public managers in times of crisis: managing stakeholders, political masters, and collaborative networks.

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Administrative capacity is necessary for achieving policy success and preventing policy fiascoes. However, a fragmented literature, sparse empirics, and a focus on developed countries have led to a gap in examining how such capacity should be measured and built; particularly in developing contexts. This paper assesses administrative capacity frameworks, indices, and reforms with a specific focus on the organizational-operational dimension that is crucial to effective implementation, in order to provide recommendations for advancing the theory and practice of capacity building. Our observations suggest that both scholars and practitioners need to be more cognizant of the fact that capacity building is a continuous process, requiring specific assessment and measurement of the components of the organizational-operational dimension. Such components include enhancing administrative autonomy and competence, and arrangements incentivizing coordination and collaboration, while safeguarding adequate control and oversight.

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The articles of this symposium were all part of the First Global Dialogue on Ethical and Effective Governance, a conference organized by the VU University in Amsterdam in May 2009. In this introduction we focus on the subtitle of the conference: governing with integrity and governing effectively/efficiently -both are intrinsically valued. The importance of governing with moral public values like transparency, equity, and honesty is clear. Yet it is also clear that acting on moral values does not always produce the required policy outcomes. The potential conflict between governing with integrity and governing efficiently and effectively is the central theme of this symposium.