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Public Value Governance: Moving beyond Traditional Public Administration and the New Public Management

Author(s): John M. Bryson, Barbara C. Crosby and Laura Bloomberg

Source: Public Administration Review , JULY/AUGUST 2014, Vol. 74, No. 4 (JULY/AUGUST 2014), pp. 445-456

Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Society for Public Administration

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John M. Bryson Barbara C. Crosby Laura Bloomberg

University of Minnesota

Public Value Governance: Moving beyond Traditional Public

Administration and the New Public Management

Anew public administration movement is emerging to move beyond traditional public administration and New Public Management.

The new movement 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. In the new approach 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 nonprofit organizations also are important as active public problem solvers. The article highlights

value-related issues in the new approach and presents

an agenda for research and action to be pursued if the new approach is to fulfill its promise.

Creating public value is a hot topic for both public administration practitioners and scholars (Shearer and Williams 2011; Van der Wal, Nabatachi, and

de Graaf 2013). Why is that? What is going on? We believe the answer lies with the continuing evolution of public administration thinking and practice. Just

as New Public Management supplanted traditional public administration in the 1980s and 1990s as the dominant view, a new movement is underway that is likely to eclipse it. The new approach does not have

a consensually agreed name, but many authors point to the need for a new approach and to aspects of its emergence in practice and theory (e.g., Moore, 1995, 2013, 2014a; Boyte 2005; Stoker 2006; Bozeman 2007; Kettl 2008; Alford and Hughes, 2008; Osborne 2010; Talbot 2010; Denhardt and Denhardt 2011;

Fisher 2014; Kalambokidis 2014). For example, Janet and Robert Denhardt's (2011) excellent and widely cited book The New Public Service captures much of

the collaborative and democratic spirit; content; and

governance focus of the movement.

While efficiency was the main concern of traditional

public administration, and efficiency and effectiveness

are the main concerns of New Public Management, values beyond efficiency and effectiveness are pursued,

debated, challenged, and evaluated in the emerg ing approach. In this regard, the emerging approach reemphasizes and brings to the fore value-related concerns of previous eras that were always present, but not dominant (Denhardt and Denhardt 2011;

Rosenbloom and McCurdy 2006). 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. This essay highlights some of the key value-related issues in the new approach

and proposes an agenda for the future. First, we outline what we believe are the main contours of the

emerging approach. Next, we clarify the meaning of value, public value, public values, and the public sphere; discuss how they are operationalized; and summarize important challenges to the concepts. We then discuss how public value and public values are used in practice. Finally, we present an agenda for research and action to be pursued if the new approach is to fulfill its promise.1

An Emerging View of Public Administration Public administration thinking and practice have always responded to new challenges and the short comings of what has come before (Kaufman 1969; Peters and Pierre 1998). Table 1, which builds on a similar table in Denhardt and Denhardt (2011,

28 — 29), presents a summary of traditional public administration, the New Public Management, and the emerging approach. The new approach highlights four

important stances that together represent a response

to current challenges and old shortcomings. These include: an emphasis on public value and public values; recognition that government has a special role

as a guarantor of public values; a belief in the impor tance of public management broadly conceived, and

of service to and for the public; and a heightened

emphasis on citizenship and democratic and col laborative governance. These concerns, of course, are

not new to public administration, but their emerging

combination is the latest response to what Dwight

Symposium Introduction

John M. Bryson is McKnight

Presidential Professor of Planning and

Public Affairs at the Humphrey School of

Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.

He wrote Strategic Planning for Public

and Nonprofit Organizations, and co

wrote with Barbara C. Crosby Leadership

for the Common Good. He received

the 2011 Dwight Waldo Award from the

American Society for Public Administration

for "outstanding contributions to the pro

fessional literature of public administration

over an extended scholarly career."

E-mail: [email protected]

Barbara C. Crosby, associate professor

at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs,

University of Minnesota, has taught and

written extensively about leadership and

public policy. She is author of Leadership

for Global Citizenship and co-author

with John M. Bryson of Leadership for

the Common Good. Former academic

co-director of the University's Center for

Integrative Leadership, she has conducted

training for senior managers of nonprofit,

business and government organizations in

the U.S. and abroad.

E-mail: [email protected]

Laura Bloomberg is associate dean at

the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at

the University of Minnesota. Her teaching,

research and publications focus on U.S.

education policy and administration,

cross sector leadership, and program

evaluation. Previously she was an urban

high school principal and executive director

of the University's Center for Integrative

Leadership. She worked with former U.S.

Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to launch

the global Women in Public Service Project.

E-mail: [email protected]

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 74, Iss. 4, pp. 445-456. © 2014 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

D01:10.1111/puar.12238.

Public Value Governance: Moving beyond Traditional Public Administration and the New Public Management 445

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Waldo (1948/2007) called the periodically changing "material and ideological background." Whether the new approach can live up to its promise—and particularly its democratic promise—is an open question we explore later.

Traditional Public Administration

Traditional public administration (Waldo 1948/2007; Stoker 2006) arose in the United States arose in the late 1900s and matured

by the mid-twentieth century as a response to a particular set of

conditions. 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. Mostly

successful experience with government responses to World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II helped solidify support for

traditional public administration and built strong trust in govern ment as an agent for the good of all. In its idealized form, politics

and administration were quite separate (Wilson 1887). Goals were determined in the first instance by elected officials and only second

arily 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 (Salamon 2002). Efficiency in government operations was the preeminent value. Citizens were viewed primarily as voters, clients, or constituents. Of course, traditional public administra tion in practice was always more deeply enmeshed in politics than

its idealized form would suggest (Waldo 1948/2007; Denhardt and Denhardt 2011, 6-7), and government agencies were themselves prone to failure (Wolf 1979).

New Public Management After a long gestation period, the New Public Management (Hood 1991) became the dominant approach to public administra tion in the 1980s and 1990s. In the U.S. the change was marked by Osborne and Gaebler's (1992) best-selling book Reinventing Government and the Clinton Administration's National Performance

Review (Gore 1993). New Public Management arose out of a con cern 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.

In New Public Management, public managers are urged to "steer, not row." They steer by determining objectives, or what should be done, and by catalyzing service delivery, or how it should be done

(rowing), via their choice of a particular "tool" or combination of

tools (e.g., markets, regulation, taxes, subsidies, insurance, etc.) for

achieving the objectives (Salamon 2002). Markets and competi tion—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,

of course, managers often face the worst of circumstances in which

they are accountable for results, but not allowed to manage for

results (Moynihan 2006).

While the challenges that prompted traditional public adminis tration and New Public Management have not disappeared, new material conditions and challenges have emerged. They center on

how to govern, not just manage, in increasingly diverse and complex societies facing increasingly complex problems (Kettl 2002; Osborne 2010; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011). Natural disasters, failures of

large parts of the economy, unevenly effective health care and edu

cational systems, a stagnant middle class, deepening inequality, and

bankrupt communities offer recent examples that have challenged not just governments, but businesses, nonprofits, and civil society

generally. In the U.S., these challenges are occurring at a time of

historic distrust of a broad range of institutions (Gallup 2014).

The Emerging Approach The responses to these new challenges do not yet constitute a coherent whole, but the outlines of a new approach are becom ing clear in, for example, Janet and Robert Denhardt's (2002; 2011) widely cited framework called the New Public Service, but also in Gerry Stoker's (2006) public value management, Barry Bozeman's (2007) managing publicness, Stephen Osborne's new public governance (2010), and political theorist Harry Boyte's and colleagues' (Boyte 2011) new civic politics.. These scholars draw on different theoretical and epistemological foundations than tradi tional public administration or New Public Management. Citizens, citizenship, and democracy are central to the new approach, which harkens back to Dwight Waldo's (1948/2007) abiding 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 (1997) "administrative man" and

microeconomics' "economic man." Citizens are seen as quite capa ble of engaging in deliberative problem solving that allows them

to develop a public spiritedness of the type de Tocqueville saw in the 1830s American republic when he talked about the prevalence of "self-interest rightly understood" (de Tocqueville 1840/2002; Mansbridge 1990).

Scholars arguing for the new approach see public value emerging from broadly inclusive dialogue and deliberation. The conversation includes community members from multiple sectors because, as Beck Jorgensen and Bozeman (2007, 373-374) note, "public values and public value are not the exclusive province of government, nor

is government the only set of institutions having public value obli gations, [though clearly] government has a special role as guarantor of public values." This aspect of the approach has many precursors, including for example, the work of Vincent and Elinor Ostrom (Ostrom 1973; Ostrom and Ostrom 1971), which also provides important underpinnings for understanding networked and col laborative governance (McGinnis and Ostrom 2012; Thomson and Perry 2006). The approach encompasses what Boyte (2011, 632-633) terms "public work," 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 develop ing 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 gover nors actively engaged in producing what is valued by the public

and good for the public (De Souza Briggs 2008). Budd (2014) cap tures the importance of work in general for the creation of public

value, and the special role that labor unions have often played in its creation.

446 Public Administration Review • July | August 2014

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Table 1 Comparing Perspectives: Traditional Public Administration, New Public Management, and the Emerging Approach to Public Administration

Dimension Traditional Public Administration New Public Management The Emerging Approach to Public Administration (e.g., Denhardt and Denhardt's [2011] New Public Service)

Broad Environmental and Intellectual Context

Material and ideo- Industrialization, urbanization, rise of Concern with government failures, Concern with market, government, nonprofit and civic logical conditions modern corporation, specialization, distrust of big government, be- failures; concern with so-called wicked problems;

faith in science, belief in progress, lief in the efficacy and efficiency deepening inequality; hollowed or thinned state; concern over major market failures, of markets and rationality, "downsized" citizenship; networked and collaborative experience with the Great Depression devolution and devolution governance; advanced information and communication and WWII, high trust in government technologies

Primary theoretical Political theory, scientific management, Economic theory, sophisticated Democratic theory, public and nonprofit management and epistemologi- naive social science, pragmatism positivist social science theory, plus diverse approaches to knowing cal foundations

Prevailing view of Synoptic rationality, "administrative Technical and economic rationality, Formal rationality, multiple tests of rationality (political, rationality and man" "economic man," self-interested administrative, economic, legal, ethical), belief in public model of human decisionmakers spiritedness beyond narrow self-interest, "reasonable behavior person" open to influence via dialogue and deliberation

The Public Sphere or Realm

Definition of the Determined by elected officials or techni- Determined by elected officials or What is public is seen as going far beyond government, common good, cal experts by aggregating individual prefer- though government has a special role as a guarantor of public value, ences supported by evidence of public values. Common good determined by broadly in public interest consumer choice elusive dialogue and deliberation informed by evidence

and democratic and constitutional values

Role of politics Elect governors, who determine policy Elect governors, who determine "Public work," including determining policy objectives via objectives policy objectives; empowered dialogue and deliberation; democracy as "a way of life"

managers; administrative politics around the use of specific tools

Role of citizenship Voter, client, constituent Customer Citizens seen as problem-solvers and co-creators actively engaged in creating what is valued by the public and is good for the public

Government and Public Administration

Role of government Rowing, seen as designing and imple- Steering, seen as determining Government acts as convener, catalyst, collaborator; agencies menting policies and programs in re- objectives and catalyzing service sometimes steering, sometimes, rowing, sometimes

sponse to politically defined objectives delivery via tool choice and partnering, sometimes staying out of the way reliance if possible on markets, businesses and nonprofit organi zations

Key objectives Politically provided goals; implementation Politically provided goals; Create public value in such a way that what the public managed by public servants; monitor- managers manage inputs and most cares about is addressed effectively and what is ing done via bureaucratic and elected outputs in a way that ensures good for the public is put in place officials' oversight economy and responsiveness to

consumers

Key values Efficiency Efficiency and Effectiveness Efficiency, effectiveness, and the full range of democratic and constitutional values

Mechanisms for Administer programs through central- Create mechanisms and incentive Selection from a menu of alternative delivery mechanisms achieving policy ized, hierarchically organized public structures to achieve policy based on pragmatic criteria; this often means helping objectives agencies or self-regulating professions objectives especially through use build cross-sector collaborations and engaging citizens

of markets to achieve agreed objectives Role of public man- Ensures that rules and appropriate Helps define and meet agreed Plays an active role in helping create and guide networks

ager procedures are followed.. Responsive upon performance objectives; of deliberation and delivery and help maintain and to elected officials, constituents, and responsive to elected officials enhance the overall effectiveness, accountability, and clients. Limited discretion allowed to and customers; wide discretion capacity of the system. Responsive to elected officials, administrative officials allowed citizens, and an array of other stakeholders. Discretion

is needed, but is constrained by law, democratic and constitutional values, and a broad approach to account ability

Approach to Hierarchical, in which administrators are Market-driven, in which aggre- Multi-faceted, since public servants must attend to law, accountability accountable to democratically elected gated self-interests result in out- community values, political norms, professional stand

officials comes desired by broad groups ards, and citizen interests of citizens seen as customers

Contribution to the Delivers politically determined objec- Delivers politically determined Delivers dialogue and catalyzes and responds to active citi democratic process tives and accountability; competition objectives; managers determine zenship in pursuit of what the public values and what is

between elected leaders provides over- the means. Skepticism regard- good for the public. No one sector has a monopoly on arching accountability. Public sector ing public service ethos; favors public service ethos; maintaining relationships based on has a monopoly on public service ethos customer service shared public values is essential

Sources: Adapted principally from Denhardt and Denhardt (2011, 28-29); with further adaptations from Stoker (2006, 44; Kelly, Mulgan, and Muers 2002), and Boyte (2011).

Public Value Governance: Moving beyond Traditional Public Administration and the New Public Management 447

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In the new approach, government agencies can be a convener,

catalyst, and collaborator—sometimes steering, sometimes row ing, sometimes partnering, and sometimes staying out of the way. In addition, 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 offi

cials' and senior administrators. In New Public Management elected officials still set goals. Managers then manage inputs and outputs in a way that ensures economy and responsiveness to customers. In contrast, 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 for public managers raises obvious questions of democratic accountability, an issue to which we turn later. On the other hand, the change is essentially simply 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.

As noted, in the emerging approach 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 (McGuire 2006; Agranoff 2006; Fung 2006). Public managers' role thus goes well beyond that in traditional public administration or New Public Management; they are presumed able to help create and guide net works 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 admin istration, public managers have limited discretion; New Public Management 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 (as in traditional

public administration) or more market-driven (as in New Public Management), since public servants must attend to law, community values, political norms, professional standards, and citizen interests (Mulgan 2000; Dubnick and Frederickson 2010; Romzek, LeRoux and Blackmar 2012). In the emerging multi-sector collaborative environment, no one sector has a monopoly on public service ethos,

although government plays a special role; in addition, there is less

skepticism about government and a less strong preference for mar kets and customer service.

Finally, in this emerging approach public administration's contribu tion to the democratic process is also different. In both traditional

public administration and New Public Management managers are not very directly involved in the democratic process, viewed mainly

as elections and legislative deliberation. In contrast, in the emerging

approach government delivers dialogue and catalyzes and responds to active citizenship in pursuit of what the public values and what is

good for the public. The extent to which it is possible for dialogue and deliberation to do so in practice remains unclear, however, in

systems that favor elites and are stacked against ordinary citizens (Dahl and Soss 2014).

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 ideologi cal background." In contrast to traditional public administration

and New Public Management, however, the emerging approach often looks ambiguous, unevenly grounded theoretically, relatively untested, and lacking in clear guidance for practice. Yet, what else

can one expect in a shared-power, multi-sector, no-one-wholly in-charge world (Cleveland 2002; Crosby and Bryson 2005)? Old approaches have their own problems and the new approach is still

emerging. One thing is clear, however, 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 2014; accessed online April 1, 2014) leaves open a num

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