Appraising Public Value: Past, Present and Futures

Abstract

Despite the increasing popularity of the concept of 'public value' within both academic and practice settings, there has to date been no formal review of the literature on its provenance, empirical basis, and application. This paper seeks to fill this gap. It provides a critical introduction to public value and its conceptual development before presenting the main elements of the published literature. Following this, a series of key areas of disagreement are discussed and implications for future research and practice put forward. The authors argue that if the espoused aspirations for the public value framework are to be realized, a concerted process of research, debate and application is required. Although some criticisms of public value are argued to be unwarranted, the authors acknowledge ongoing concerns over the apparent silence of public value on questions of power and heterogeneity, and the difficulties in empirically testing the framework's propositions.

Questões epistemológicas e ontológicas para o estudo do e-government Do ato ao pensamento

“…Para além de alguns quadros de referência sobre valores públicos (Moore, 1995) e da algumas tentativas de revisão exaustiva da literatura sobre este tema (Williams & Shearer, 2011), trata-se ainda de uma matéria que está a ser estudada em vários contextos emergentes, nomeadamente em relação a perspetivas mais recentes sobre a coprodução de valor (Alford, 2009) ou também a importância que os valores do serviço publico podem representar para uma utilização mais adequada das TIC no setor público, que passa cada vez mais pela orientação à resolução interdepartamental dos eventos de vida do cidadão e agentes económicos e não simplesmente no cumprimento instrumental de melhores práticas intraorganizacionais.…”

Without Blinders: Public Values Scholarship in Political Science, Economics, and Law—Content and Contribution to Public Administration

“…Moore, 1995;Nabatchi, 2012aNabatchi, , 2012b. Second, Williams and Shearer (2011) recently released a content analysis and categorization of 74 scholarly publications on public value, and there is no merit in (partially) replicating their exercise.…”

Asymmetrical Information and Public Failure in the Myriad Decision

“…Thus, these scholars tend to reject generic management approaches that are applicable to both public and business management processes. Williams and Shearer's (2011) review of journal articles and books on the Public Value concept over a 15-year period is illustrative. Any research that applied Public Value in a non-public organization setting was excluded from their review, including Shareef's (2008Shareef's ( , 2010 and Moore and Khagram's (2004) research.…”

“…The concept of Public Value as a normative management construct has become popular in the public administration discipline over the past 15 years (Alford & O'Flynn, 2009;Bozeman, 2002Bozeman, , 2007Moore, 1995;Shareef, 2008;Williams & Shearer, 2011). Bozeman's (2002Bozeman's ( , 2007 work in this area is especially instructive.…”