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Public value

Public value is a conceptual framework in public administration theory, pioneered by Mark H. Moore in his 1995 book Creating Public Value, which posits that public managers should strategically deploy government resources to generate outcomes that advance collective societal goals, such as enhanced welfare, equity, security, and legitimacy, in contrast to private sector metrics centered on financial returns.^[1] This approach reframes public sector performance not merely through efficiency or outputs, but via a "public value proposition" that aligns operational capabilities with citizen-endorsed priorities, often modeled through Moore's strategic triangle: a viable value-creating strategy, legitimacy and support from an authorizing environment (including elected officials and the public), and sufficient organizational resources to execute it.^[2] Public value is inherently collective, derived from government actions like regulation, service delivery, and policy implementation, rather than individualized consumption.^[3] The framework has influenced public management practices globally, promoting tools like the public value account to assess non-market benefits and fostering debates on measuring intangible gains such as trust and social cohesion.^[4] However, it has drawn criticisms for vagueness in defining and quantifying "value," potential overemphasis on managerial discretion that sidelines political oversight, and insufficient empirical grounding beyond theoretical constructs, with detractors like Rhodes and Wanna arguing it risks conflating bureaucratic goals with democratic imperatives.^[5]^[6] Despite these challenges, public value theory persists as an evolving paradigm, integrating with public service logic to emphasize co-creation of outcomes amid complex stakeholder dynamics.^[7]

Origins and Conceptual Foundations

Historical Development

The concept of public value emerged amid the dominance of New Public Management (NPM) paradigms in the 1980s and 1990s, which emphasized market-oriented reforms, efficiency gains, and disaggregation of public services to mimic private sector practices, as seen in initiatives like the U.S. Grace Commission under Reagan in 1982 and the UK's Financial Management Initiative under Thatcher from 1982.^[8] NPM, popularized by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler's 1992 book Reinventing Government, prioritized entrepreneurial governance and performance measurement but faced criticism for undervaluing broader societal outcomes and democratic legitimacy.^[5] Mark H. Moore formalized public value theory as a counterpoint, first articulating it in a 1994 article titled "Public Value as the Focus of Strategy" published in the Australian Journal of Public Administration, where he proposed it as a strategic orientation for public managers analogous to shareholder value in the private sector.^[9] This was expanded in his seminal 1995 book Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government, which argued for public managers to prioritize outcomes that align with citizen preferences and public resources, using authorizing environments and operational capacities to achieve them.^[1] Moore, drawing from his role at Harvard Kennedy School, positioned public value as a normative framework to address NPM's shortcomings by refocusing on collective societal benefits rather than narrow efficiency metrics.^[10] Early evolution included adaptations in policy contexts, such as the UK Cabinet Office's 2002 report Creating Public Value: An Analytical Framework by Kelly, Mulgan, and Woolcock, which integrated Moore's ideas into practical tools for assessing government interventions amid post-NPM reforms under the Blair administration.^[5] Scholars like John Benington and Stoker (2006) further developed it as a "post-NPM" approach, emphasizing networked governance and legitimacy through public deliberation, influencing applications in Europe and Australia by the mid-2000s.^[8] By the 2010s, extensions appeared in works like Moore's 2013 Recognizing Public Value, refining measurement via the strategic triangle of public value, legitimacy, and capabilities.^[10]

Core Definitions and Proponents

Public value, as originally conceptualized by Mark H. Moore in his 1995 book Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government, refers to the outcomes achieved by public managers through the strategic use of state authority, resources, and organizational capacities to produce results that citizens collectively value and that are deemed legitimate within democratic processes.^[1]^[10] Moore positioned public value as analogous to shareholder value in the private sector, but oriented toward enhancing social welfare, fairness, and equity rather than financial returns, with success measured by improvements in societal conditions as evaluated by the public and authorized by elected officials.^[1]^[11] At its core, public value creation requires public managers to pursue goals that are substantively valuable (addressing public needs), politically legitimate (supported by the authorizing environment of citizens, politicians, and courts), and operationally feasible (within organizational capabilities), thereby shifting focus from rule compliance or efficiency alone to proactive value-seeking strategies.^[11]^[10] Moore described this as equipping managers with "restless, value-seeking imaginations" to identify opportunities for societal benefit from entrusted public assets, such as tax revenues and coercive powers, while ensuring accountability to prevent overreach.^[1] The primary proponent of public value theory is Mark H. Moore, a professor at Harvard Kennedy School who developed the framework during the 1980s and 1990s in response to critiques of bureaucratic inefficiency and New Public Management's market-oriented reforms.^[10]^[12] Moore expanded the concept in his 2013 book Recognizing Public Value, refining measurement approaches to include citizen perceptions and long-term social impacts.^[10] While Moore's work forms the foundational core, subsequent scholars such as John Benington have extended it to networked governance contexts, emphasizing collaborative value creation across public, private, and civil society actors, though these build directly on Moore's strategic principles rather than constituting independent origins.^[13]

Theoretical Framework

The Strategic Triangle

The Strategic Triangle, a core analytical tool in public value management developed by Mark H. Moore, requires the alignment of three interdependent elements—public value outcomes, legitimacy and support from the authorizing environment, and operational capacity—for public organizations to achieve sustainable value creation.^[1]^[14] Introduced in Moore's 1995 book Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government, the framework posits that managerial strategies fail unless they simultaneously deliver desirable results to citizens, secure endorsement from oversight bodies such as elected officials and the public, and leverage sufficient organizational resources to execute effectively.^[15] This alignment addresses the unique constraints of public sector operations, where managers lack direct market signals like profits and must navigate pluralistic demands.^[16] At the apex of the triangle lies the public value proposition, which defines the substantive outcomes or objectives pursued, such as improved public health, security, or equity, evaluated against citizen preferences and societal needs rather than purely financial metrics.^[14] Moore emphasizes that these outcomes must form a coherent set, akin to shareholder value in private firms but encompassing broader externalities like trust in institutions or collective welfare.^[1] For instance, a strategy to reduce urban crime rates would specify targeted reductions (e.g., a 15% drop in reported incidents within two years) grounded in empirical needs assessments.^[15] The base of legitimacy and support encompasses endorsement from the authorizing environment, including elected representatives, oversight boards, courts, and public opinion, which provides political backing, funding, and regulatory clearance.^[16] Without this, even well-intentioned initiatives risk reversal; Moore notes that public managers must actively cultivate these relationships, as democratic accountability demands strategies that align with diverse stakeholder expectations, such as through consultations or performance reporting to legislatures.^[14] Empirical studies applying the framework highlight cases where insufficient support, like community opposition to infrastructure projects, derailed value-creating efforts despite technical viability.^[15] Operational capacity forms the third vertex, representing the tangible and intangible resources—including personnel skills, technology, budgets, and partnerships—required to convert inputs into outputs and outcomes.^[16] Moore argues this element ensures feasibility, warning that overambitious value propositions without matching capabilities lead to inefficiency or failure, as seen in under-resourced public health campaigns where inadequate staffing resulted in unmet vaccination targets.^[14] Capacity building often involves efficiency metrics, such as cost per unit of service delivered, to demonstrate viability to authorizers.^[15] In operation, the triangle functions dynamically: a strategy's success reinforces all elements through feedback loops, where achieved value bolsters legitimacy (e.g., via improved public trust) and frees resources for capacity enhancement.^[15] Managers use it diagnostically to scan environments for opportunities, balancing trade-offs—such as scaling back scope if capacity lags—and iteratively adjusting plans.^[16] While praised for shifting focus from bureaucratic process to results-oriented leadership, the framework's reliance on qualitative judgments in defining value has drawn critique for potential subjectivity in non-market contexts.^[14] Nonetheless, it remains influential in public administration training and policy evaluation as of 2022.^[16]

Public Value Proposition

The public value proposition constitutes the core articulation by public managers of the specific societal outcomes or benefits they intend to produce, distinct from private sector counterparts by prioritizing collective welfare over individual profit. Introduced by Mark H. Moore in his 1995 framework for strategic management in government, it functions as a task-specific declaration—more focused than a general mission statement—encompassing public aspirations, citizen concerns, and adherence to procedural norms of good governance, such as fairness and efficiency.^[1]^[17] Within Moore's strategic triangle, the public value proposition occupies the apex representing substantive value creation, which must be corroborated by two supporting elements: legitimacy and backing from an authorizing environment (e.g., elected officials, courts, and citizens) and sufficient operational capacity within the public organization or its networks.^[18]^[1] This triangular validation ensures that proposed actions, such as enhancing environmental protections or public safety through innovative service delivery, are not only theoretically beneficial but politically viable and executively feasible, thereby mitigating risks of overreach or resource waste.^[18] Developing a robust public value proposition demands that managers employ "restless, value-seeking imaginations" to identify opportunities for leveraging entrusted public assets—like taxpayer funds, regulatory powers, and institutional expertise—while diagnosing environmental dynamics to anticipate challenges.^[1] For example, a corrections agency might propose shifting emphasis from incarceration to rehabilitation programs to yield long-term societal gains in reduced recidivism, but only if it secures stakeholder endorsement and builds requisite alliances or capabilities.^[17] This process underscores the proposition's diagnostic utility, enabling iterative refinement to align ambitious public goods with real-world constraints.^[1]

Legitimacy and Support Mechanisms

In Mark H. Moore's public value framework, legitimacy and support constitute one essential vertex of the strategic triangle, representing the political and social endorsement required for public managers to pursue strategies that create value for citizens. This dimension encompasses the organization's standing with key stakeholders in the authorizing environment, including elected officials, governing boards, the media, public opinion, interest groups, and influential individuals, whose approval provides the necessary authority, funding, and resources to sustain operations and initiatives.^[19]^[14] Without such backing, even well-conceived public value propositions risk failure due to resource denial or legal challenges, as public agencies lack the market mechanisms available to private firms for securing capital.^[15] Securing legitimacy involves demonstrating alignment between organizational missions and broader community values, often through active participation in policy dialogues, legislative processes, and public consultations to build trust and consensus. Support mechanisms include mobilizing diverse revenue sources such as government appropriations, donor contributions, and volunteer commitments; fostering positive media relations and public reputation; and maintaining cooperative ties with regulators, civil society actors, and beneficiaries to ensure ongoing resource flows and operational autonomy.^[14]^[19] For instance, public managers may track indicators like volunteer participation rates or stakeholder approval surveys to assess and enhance this standing, treating it as a dynamic process requiring continuous negotiation and adaptation to shifting political priorities.^[14] Assessment of legitimacy and support typically relies on qualitative and quantitative measures, such as stakeholder perception analyses, funding stability metrics, and engagement levels in service delivery, which help managers diagnose gaps and adjust strategies accordingly. These elements are interdependent with operational capacity and the public value proposition, forming a balanced approach where legitimacy not only authorizes action but also amplifies perceived value through democratic validation.^[19] Empirical applications, such as in nonprofit and governmental contexts, underscore that diversified stakeholder engagement—encompassing formal authorizers and grassroots participants—enhances resilience against political volatility, as evidenced in frameworks adapted for international NGOs where donor diversification and volunteer mobilization directly correlate with sustained mission viability.^[14]

Operational Capacity Requirements

Operational capacity in public value theory constitutes the third element of Mark Moore's strategic triangle, alongside the public value proposition and legitimacy from the authorizing environment. It denotes the tangible capabilities of a public organization—including its resources, skills, processes, and management structures—to execute strategies and deliver intended outcomes effectively and efficiently. Without sufficient operational capacity, even a compelling public value proposition supported by stakeholders risks failure, as the organization cannot translate authorization into results. Moore emphasized that public managers must assess and develop this capacity to bridge the gap between strategic intent and practical delivery, often requiring investments in personnel, technology, and partnerships.^[14] Key requirements for operational capacity include human capital, such as skilled personnel capable of innovation and execution; financial resources to fund operations without undue fiscal strain; and technological infrastructure to support service delivery. For instance, Moore illustrated that capacity-building might involve forging external partnerships or reallocating internal competencies to achieve cost-effective outcomes while maintaining quality standards. In practice, this demands rigorous organizational diagnostics, such as evaluating workflow efficiencies or supply chain robustness, to ensure alignment with public objectives. Deficiencies in these areas, like outdated systems or talent shortages, can undermine public trust and value creation, as evidenced in analyses of government agencies struggling with implementation despite policy consensus.^[11]^[20] Public managers operationalize capacity through adaptive strategies, including performance measurement tools like scorecards that track resource utilization against goals, and continuous improvement mechanisms to foster resilience. Moore's framework posits that capacity is not static but must evolve with external demands, such as technological disruptions or scaling needs, often necessitating entrepreneurial leadership to secure additional resources from the authorizing environment. Empirical studies confirm that high-capacity organizations, characterized by strong internal governance and inter-agency coordination, correlate with superior public value realization, whereas gaps lead to inefficiencies like project delays or budget overruns.^[14]^[21]

Framework as Diagnostic Tool

The Public Value Framework, particularly through its strategic triangle, functions as a diagnostic instrument for public managers to evaluate organizational strategies and environmental conditions. By examining the alignment among the public value proposition, legitimizing and supporting mechanisms from the authorizing environment, and operational capacity, the framework identifies discrepancies that hinder value creation. Mark Moore, the framework's originator, posits that misalignment signals potential failures, such as a compelling value proposition lacking political support or insufficient resources, prompting targeted interventions.^[1]^[22] In practice, diagnosis begins with assessing the status quo: evaluating whether the proposed public value—defined as outcomes like improved societal welfare or efficiency—aligns with stakeholder demands and receives endorsement from oversight bodies such as legislatures or citizens. If legitimacy is absent, the tool reveals risks of policy rejection or resource denial; conversely, excess capacity without a viable proposition indicates inefficiency. Operational shortfalls, such as inadequate skills or technology, are flagged when they undermine delivery, as seen in analyses of public systems where capacity gaps prevent achieving endorsed goals. This tripartite check enables managers to pinpoint causal weaknesses rather than symptoms, fostering causal realism in reforms.^[1]^[6]^[22] Beyond initial assessment, the framework supports ongoing diagnosis by monitoring progress and adapting to shifts, such as changing political priorities or resource constraints post-2010s fiscal austerity in Western governments. Moore emphasizes its utility for executives to "diagnose their environments to spot opportunities for creating value," converting static evaluation into dynamic foresight. Empirical applications, including education system reviews, demonstrate its effectiveness in revealing systemic misalignments, though critics note its reliance on managerial judgment may overlook external biases in authorizing environments.^[1]^[17]^[22]

Applications Across Sectors

Implementation in Public Administration

Public value implementation in public administration requires public managers to adopt strategic management practices that leverage public assets—such as tax revenues and regulatory authority—to generate net societal benefits exceeding those achievable through market or voluntary means. This process emphasizes entrepreneurial initiative, where managers scan environments for opportunities to enhance public welfare, formulate value propositions, and align them with democratic accountability. Central to execution is Moore's strategic triangle, which mandates that initiatives sustain a compelling public value proposition, secure ongoing legitimacy and support from authorizing bodies like elected officials and citizens, and build requisite operational capacities including skilled personnel and resources.^[1] Managers diagnose contexts, design tested actions, and iteratively monitor and adapt strategies to dynamic conditions, ensuring alignment with public oversight mechanisms.^[1] In operational terms, implementation often shifts focus from input-based metrics to outcome-oriented assessments, enabling agencies to prioritize efficiency and effectiveness in resource allocation. For instance, UK public service reforms under this paradigm emphasized delivering measurable health improvements and productivity gains over mere procedural compliance, such as counting medical appointments, thereby fostering resilience and public trust through evidence of valued results.^[23] Similarly, in the UK's National Health Service (NHS), co-production models engage users and community sectors to extend health benefits beyond clinical interventions, achieving broader societal outcomes like reduced community health disparities.^[23] These approaches integrate stakeholder collaboration to negotiate trade-offs, with managers acting as value stewards who balance contestable public preferences against organizational constraints. Practical strategies frequently incorporate citizen engagement and iterative innovation to embed public value creation. In Boston's Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, user-driven design processes developed tools like the Citizens Connect app for rapid service reporting, prototyping solutions through cross-agency collaboration to address urban challenges efficiently.^[24] South Korea's Namyangju Hope Care System exemplifies localized implementation via a 2007 ordinance formalizing mobile welfare services and volunteer-led repairs, which repaired 1,400 homes and mobilized KRW 6.8 billion in donations since inception, targeting underserved elderly and disabled populations through co-production.^[24] Canadian municipal assemblies, such as those in Duncan-North Cowichan, employ civic lotteries to select diverse citizen panels for deliberative input on governance issues like amalgamation, supported by expert facilitation to reconcile value conflicts and inform policy.^[24] Germany's Regional Innovation Networks in North Rhine-Westphalia break sectoral silos by convening stakeholders for targeted initiatives, such as diabetes prevention programs integrating research and service delivery.^[24] Challenges in rollout include navigating value pluralism and resource limitations, often addressed through phased pilots and performance monitoring. Institutionalization via policy directives or cross-boundary platforms, as in Sweden's Gothenburg regional collaborations for education and refugee integration, sustains long-term capacity by fostering voluntary cooperation and knowledge sharing.^[24] Overall, successful implementation demands managers' proactive role in building coalitions, prototyping interventions, and evaluating impacts against public expectations, adapting to contextual needs while upholding accountability.^[1]^[24]

Extensions to Private and Hybrid Organizations

Scholars have extended the public value framework beyond public sector entities to private organizations, arguing that for-profit firms can apply elements of the strategic triangle—public value proposition, authorizing environment, and operational capacity—to enhance legitimacy and incorporate societal outcomes alongside economic returns.^[18] In environments with heightened stakeholder scrutiny, private managers must secure broader support from communities, regulators, and the public, similar to public managers, by addressing demands for social goods such as environmental sustainability that traditionally fell under government purview.^[18] This adaptation encourages private entities to adopt stakeholder-oriented strategies over pure shareholder primacy, using tools like triple-bottom-line reporting to align operational capabilities with non-economic value creation.^[18] For instance, private ventures have been shown to generate noneconomic public value through innovation in areas like sustainable supply chains, measured via proxies for societal impact beyond profit metrics.^[25] Hybrid organizations, blending public, private, and nonprofit logics, represent a primary arena for public value extensions, as they pursue blended outcomes addressing complex social challenges through cross-sector collaboration. These entities, such as social enterprises or public-private partnerships (PPPs), create public value by leveraging private efficiency and innovation with public legitimacy, often quantified through social impact assessments that track inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and long-term effects. In PPPs for infrastructure, private partners contribute operational capacity while aligning with public values like efficiency and accountability, though governance mechanisms are critical to prevent value erosion.^[26] An example is social impact bonds, where private investors finance public services (e.g., recidivism reduction programs), with returns tied to verified outcomes, enabling hybrid value creation that distributes risks and rewards across sectors.^[27] The Italian National Civil Service illustrates hybrid application, where public funding and third-sector volunteers generated €1,777,402.60 in economic value from 1440 volunteer hours in 2019, supporting social services like elderly care and cultural programs. Critics note challenges in hybrids, including institutional pluralism leading to conflicting goals between profit motives and public mandates, requiring robust mechanisms for value alignment.^[28] Nonetheless, these extensions demonstrate public value's versatility in incentivizing private and hybrid actors to prioritize societal contributions, provided authorizing environments enforce accountability.^[18]^[27]

Comparative International Case Studies

In the United Kingdom, public value management has informed governance reforms since the 2010 coalition government, emphasizing strategic alignment of public sector organizations with citizen priorities amid austerity measures. For instance, the BBC's application of public value accounting in the mid-2000s evaluated service impacts against license fee costs, balancing operational efficiency with cultural and educational outcomes, though it faced criticism for underemphasizing market competition.^[29] Comparative analysis reveals that UK implementations often prioritize legitimacy through parliamentary oversight, contrasting with more decentralized approaches elsewhere, yet persistent underfunding has limited operational capacity, as evidenced by NHS performance metrics showing delayed care targets in 2022-2023.^[30] Australia has adapted public value frameworks in sector-specific reforms, such as Western Australia's 2010-2015 disability services transition, where public managers coordinated state-federal funding shifts to individual support packages, enhancing client autonomy and reducing institutionalization rates by 20% in pilot regions. This case exemplifies the strategic triangle by securing authorizing environment support via bipartisan policy consensus while building delivery capabilities through cross-agency partnerships.^[31] In comparison to the UK, Australian applications demonstrate greater emphasis on outcome measurement via tools like the Public Value Scorecard, yielding quantifiable gains in equity—e.g., increased service access for remote Indigenous communities—but reveal challenges in sustaining value amid fiscal pressures, with evaluations noting uneven regional implementation by 2018.^[16] The Netherlands provides a continental European contrast, integrating public value into collaborative governance, as seen in citizen initiatives for local welfare in municipalities like those studied in 2023 Q-methodology research, where civil servants and stakeholders co-defined value through participatory forums, resulting in 70% adoption of community-proposed projects for social cohesion.^[32] Unlike the top-down legitimacy mechanisms in the UK and Australia, Dutch cases leverage bottom-up support via multi-stakeholder coalitions, fostering operational resilience in areas like water governance; Amsterdam's Circular Economy Knowledge Action Programme (ongoing since 2015) has piloted 90+ initiatives, reducing urban flood risks by 15% through public-private dialogues.^[24] However, cross-national comparisons highlight vulnerabilities: Dutch models excel in inclusivity but struggle with scalability during crises, as public transport innovation projects from 2000-2010 showed delays due to fragmented authorizing environments.^[33] Broader international evidence from OECD analyses underscores variances in public value realization; South Korea's Namyangju Hope Care System (2006-present) scaled welfare via volunteer networks, serving 274,484 cases by 2016 and extending equity to underserved populations, outperforming UK austerity-constrained models in coverage breadth but requiring stronger central legitimacy to avoid donor fatigue.^[24] In Canada, citizen assemblies like Duncan-North Cowichan's 2017 panel influenced merger policies with 93% recommendation uptake, prioritizing deliberative legitimacy over Australia's outcome-focused metrics, yet both reveal causal trade-offs: enhanced public trust correlates with slower decision cycles, per 2017-2019 evaluations.^[24] These cases collectively affirm public value's diagnostic utility but expose implementation divergences—Anglo-sphere emphasis on accountability yields fiscal discipline, while European and Asian hybrids foster adaptability, though empirical data indicate no universal superiority without context-specific operational investments.^[34]

Measurement and Evaluation

Rationales for Assessing Public Value

Assessing public value enables public organizations to verify whether their activities generate net societal benefits that justify the resources expended, addressing the absence of market-driven profit signals in government operations. This evaluation determines if outcomes—such as improved public safety, health, or equity—outweigh costs, including opportunity costs of alternative uses of public funds. Mark Moore emphasizes that such measurement is essential to confirm value creation, incorporating both utilitarian gains (e.g., aggregate welfare improvements) and deontological elements (e.g., procedural fairness), thereby guiding managers toward efficient resource deployment.^[35] A primary rationale is enhancing accountability to authorizing environments, including elected officials, taxpayers, and citizens, by providing transparent evidence of performance beyond narrow financial audits. Reported metrics influence resource allocation, as decision-makers prioritize activities with demonstrable impacts, aligning expenditures with public priorities and fostering trust in governance institutions. Without rigorous assessment, public managers risk legitimacy deficits, as stakeholders demand proof that entrusted assets yield broader societal returns rather than mere outputs.^[36]^[35] Evaluation supports strategic management and organizational learning by integrating feedback on the strategic triangle—public value propositions, operational capacities, and legitimacy—allowing iterative improvements in service delivery. For instance, assessments reveal misalignments, such as insufficient public support for initiatives despite technical feasibility, prompting adjustments to enhance overall effectiveness. This process promotes innovation, as data-driven insights enable managers to refine strategies, mobilize resources, and adapt to evolving societal needs, ultimately elevating performance across government entities.^[14] Furthermore, measuring public value facilitates evidence-based justification for funding and policy continuity, capturing multidimensional impacts like social cohesion or environmental sustainability that traditional metrics overlook. By quantifying comprehensive value, organizations can make compelling cases to stakeholders, countering criticisms of inefficiency and ensuring sustained support amid fiscal constraints. Persistent application of these assessments mitigates risks of unintended consequences, such as inequitable outcomes, through ongoing monitoring and correction.^[36]^[14]

Methodological Approaches

Mark Moore proposed the Public Value Scorecard as an adaptation of the balanced scorecard for public sector entities, integrating assessments of public value outcomes—such as client satisfaction and social benefits—with legitimacy from authorizing environments and operational capacity metrics like efficiency and sustainability.^[35] This framework operates through a strategic triangle, where managers track empirical indicators tailored to specific agencies, for instance, New York Police Department measures of crime reduction alongside force usage and public trust surveys, to evaluate net value creation over time.^[35] Complementing this, Moore's Public Value Account functions as a ledger balancing financial and non-financial costs—such as authority deployment—against benefits including deontological factors like fairness and rights protection, enabling bottom-line assessments without relying solely on market prices.^[35] Timo Meynhardt developed a multidimensional public value framework emphasizing relational aspects, with normative (e.g., ethical standards), affective (e.g., emotional bonds), and instrumental (e.g., functional outcomes) dimensions, which he operationalized into a scorecard using survey-based scales validated through empirical construct testing on organizational contributions to societal well-being.^[37] This approach involves Likert-scale questionnaires administered to stakeholders, scoring entities on a 1-6 agreement scale for value generation, as applied in the Public Value Atlas to benchmark institutions against public perceptions of common good.^[38] Barry Bozeman's Public Value Mapping method targets science and policy outcomes by first identifying domain-specific public values from policy documents, then sorting them hierarchically, establishing metrics, and constructing causal logic models linking activities to impacts via knowledge value collectives—networks of actors producing social outcomes.^[39] The process includes hypothesis testing through case studies, such as evaluating state-funded cancer research against national benchmarks for accessibility and human capital development, prioritizing non-market social criteria over economic returns.^[39] Economic techniques like contingent valuation elicit willingness-to-pay via surveys for non-market public goods, as in cultural sector studies estimating average values of £3.50-£6.40 per person for museum benefits including non-use values.^[29] Social Return on Investment (SROI) quantifies broader impacts by monetizing outcomes relative to inputs, for example, deriving £3 in savings per £1 invested in children's services through stakeholder-verified proxies for intangible benefits.^[29] Participatory methods incorporate democratic input, such as deliberative polling with 250-600 informed participants to gauge shifted opinions on policy issues like crime reduction, or citizens' juries with randomly selected panels delivering recommendations on complex topics.^[40] These approaches, often combined in mixed-methods evaluations, aim to capture subjective legitimacy and holistic outcomes but require rigorous design to mitigate biases in public expression.^[40]

Persistent Challenges in Quantification

One persistent challenge in quantifying public value stems from its inherently multi-dimensional nature, encompassing not only economic outcomes but also social, ecological, and legitimacy-based elements such as trust and equity, which resist aggregation into a single metric without significant information loss.^[41] ^[3] Efforts to operationalize Mark Moore's strategic triangle—balancing valued outcomes, authorizing environments, and operational capabilities—often falter due to the qualitative aspects of legitimacy and support, where converting public perceptions into numerical scores lacks robust methodological validation.^[3] ^[14] Unlike private sector value, which benefits from market prices as proxies, public value frequently lacks observable exchange values, particularly for non-market goods like environmental preservation or civic trust, complicating contingent valuation techniques that rely on hypothetical willingness-to-pay surveys prone to bias and inconsistency.^[29] Systematic reviews of measurement literature reveal theoretical stagnation, with few studies advancing beyond ad hoc indicators to empirically validated scales, as diverse stakeholder preferences and contextual variability undermine universal metrics.^[41] For instance, while efficiency metrics like cost-benefit ratios are quantifiable, they undervalue long-term, non-use benefits such as intergenerational equity, where discounting future impacts at standard rates (e.g., 3-5% annually) misaligns with public moral commitments.^[29] Causal attribution poses another enduring barrier, as isolating public interventions' contributions to outcomes amid confounding variables—such as macroeconomic shifts or private sector influences—demands complex econometric models that are resource-intensive and rarely standardized across sectors.^[42] Despite proposals for hybrid approaches combining surveys, administrative data, and wellbeing indices, persistent gaps in data comparability and the absence of consensus on core dimensions perpetuate reliance on proxy measures that may overemphasize short-term outputs over holistic value creation.^[41] ^[3] These issues highlight the tension between public value's aspirational breadth and the precision required for accountability, with empirical progress limited by institutional inertia in adopting interdisciplinary quantification tools.^[42]

Criticisms and Controversies

Theoretical Weaknesses

Public value theory has been critiqued for its conceptual vagueness, as the term "public value" lacks a precise, operational definition, allowing it to be interpreted in multiple ways without clear boundaries, which critics argue makes it "all things to all people" and hinders rigorous analysis.^[43] This ambiguity arises because public value encompasses diverse outcomes such as efficiency, equity, and legitimacy, but without standardized criteria for prioritization or measurement, leading to inconsistent application across contexts.^[44] Rhodes and Wanna, for instance, contend that this elasticity, while boosting its popularity, undermines its theoretical coherence by conflating normative aspirations with empirical descriptors.^[43] A related weakness lies in the identification problem within public values theory, where there is no consensus on methods to discern authentic public values, such as through surveys, governmental documents, or ethical deliberation, compounded by issues of value plurality, transformation, and ethical judgments.^[45] This extends to the motivation problem, as it remains unclear whether policy actions genuinely pursue public values or are driven by self-interest, with motivations varying across phases of identification, instrumentation, and outcomes, eroding trust in the framework's causal claims.^[45] Furthermore, the instrument problem highlights deficiencies in translating identified values into effective tools, due to path dependencies, long-term implementation hurdles, and competing stakeholder interests, rendering the theory practically indeterminate.^[45] The framework's empirical foundation is also contested, as it functions more as a normative prescription for managerial behavior than a falsifiable empirical theory, with critics noting its resistance to testing due to contextual relativity and absence of clear evaluation criteria.^[6] Moore's original formulation emphasizes managerial strategies for value creation but struggles to distinguish descriptive realities from prescriptive ideals, leading to debates over whether it adequately diagnoses public sector practices or merely advocates for them.^[6] This normative tilt risks overemphasizing managerial discretion without robust mechanisms for validation against outcomes. Accountability concerns further expose theoretical gaps, as the theory's focus on public managers as value creators can elevate them toward unchecked authority, akin to "Platonic guardians," potentially sidelining elected officials and democratic processes in favor of expert judgment.^[46] While Moore incorporates political authorization via his strategic triangle, critiques highlight tensions between managerial and political accountability, where managers may prioritize perceived public value over electorally mandated priorities, fostering risks of politicization or elite capture absent stronger safeguards for power dynamics and pluralism.^[46]

Practical Implementation Failures

Practical implementation of public value frameworks, such as Mark Moore's strategic triangle emphasizing value creation, authorizing support, and operational capacity, frequently encounters structural and operational hurdles that undermine intended outcomes. One core issue is the breakdown in mechanisms for articulating and aggregating diverse public values, leading to policies that misalign with societal preferences; Bozeman identifies this as a primary public value failure, where institutional rigidities prevent effective deliberation, as seen in the U.S. Congress's pre-1960s seniority system that stalled civil rights legislation despite evident public demand.^[47] Similarly, benefit hoarding occurs when public resources are captured by narrow interests, exemplified by disparities in U.S. public education funding tied to local property taxes, which perpetuate inequities despite nominal commitments to broad value creation.^[47] Critics like Rhodes and Wanna contend that Moore's approach practically encourages public managers to usurp political authority by independently defining and pursuing value, fostering unelected "Platonic guardians" who prioritize managerial discretion over democratic oversight, a dynamic observed in attempts to expand agency mandates without sustained legislative buy-in.^[48] This overreach manifests in accountability gaps, where subjective value assessments justify resource-intensive initiatives that fail to deliver measurable benefits, as managers navigate short time horizons that discount long-term risks, such as ecological threats from policies favoring market substitutes over conservation.^[47] Empirical cases in technology-driven public value initiatives, particularly smart city projects reliant on co-creation, highlight coordination and commitment failures. The Transantiago transport system in Santiago, Chile, launched in 2007, aimed to enhance urban mobility but collapsed due to fragmented agency roles, inadequate fleet and fare infrastructure, and absent shared decision-making, yielding a US$400 million deficit and eroded public trust by 2008.^[49] In Tricity, Poland, the 2019 MEVO bike-sharing scheme faltered from provider financial instability and unaddressed resource dependencies, incurring PLN 9.7 million losses and fostering citizen skepticism through unfulfilled service promises.^[49] The Rio Operations Center in Brazil suffered from capacity shortages, opaque data practices, and exclusion of marginalized groups, diminishing social value despite integration goals, while Toronto's Sidewalk Lab project was aborted in 2020 amid disputes over data ownership and insufficient stakeholder autonomy, underscoring persistent transparency deficits in hybrid public-private value pursuits.^[49] These failures often stem from instrument problems in public values theory, where abstract values prove difficult to operationalize into concrete actions amid political contestation and resource constraints, resulting in suboptimal outcomes like scarcity of specialized providers or threats to subsistence values through misaligned incentives.^[50] In government AI adoption, for instance, pursuits of efficiency gains have triggered value failures when deployment overlooks privacy erosions or equity gaps without offsetting public benefits, as evidenced by surveys linking such mismatches to negative citizen perceptions since 2021.^[51] Overall, these patterns reveal how implementation gaps—exacerbated by imperfect monopolies and substitutability biases—frequently convert theoretical public value ambitions into tangible inefficiencies or erosions of legitimacy.^[47]

Ideological and Economic Critiques

Public value theory has faced ideological criticism for promoting an undemocratic expansion of managerial authority at the expense of elected politicians. Scholars such as R.A.W. Rhodes and John Wanna argue that the framework positions public managers as "Platonic guardians" who define and pursue public value independently, effectively usurping the democratic role of government ministers and party politics.^[52] This critique holds particular relevance in Westminster-style systems, where ministerial accountability to parliament is central, as opposed to the more fragmented U.S. political context from which Mark Moore's ideas originated; Rhodes and Wanna contend that public value encourages managers to "rebel against standard politics," prioritizing operational autonomy over collective political judgment.^[5] Such views align with a traditionalist ideology emphasizing the primacy of representative institutions to prevent bureaucratic overreach.^[53] Further ideological objections highlight public value's potential to dilute genuine democratic contestation by framing value creation as a technocratic process. Robert D. Behn and others note that the theory's emphasis on managerial vision risks substituting "managed democracy" for robust political debate, where conflicting interests and power dynamics are sidelined in favor of consensus-driven outcomes defined by unelected experts.^[54] Critics from this standpoint, including those wary of post-New Public Management shifts, argue it embeds a managerialist ideology that erodes the pluralism essential to ideological diversity in governance, potentially favoring elite-defined priorities over broader societal values articulated through electoral processes.^[5] Economically, public value theory is critiqued for overlooking incentive structures and principal-agent problems inherent in public organizations, drawing on public choice theory's skepticism of benevolent bureaucracy. Public choice scholars, such as those extending James Buchanan's work, posit that managers and bureaucrats pursue self-interest—such as budget maximization or empire-building—rather than abstract public value, leading to rent-seeking and allocative inefficiencies absent market discipline.^[55] Unlike private firms subject to profit-loss signals, public value relies on subjective assessments of worth without comparable mechanisms to enforce economic discipline, potentially resulting in resource misallocation; for instance, without competitive pressures, agencies may prioritize visible outputs over cost-effective outcomes. Empirical observations in public sector expansions, such as those documented in U.S. federal budgeting from the 1980s onward, support this by showing persistent growth in administrative costs uncorrelated with measurable value gains.^[56] Additional economic critiques emphasize the framework's insufficient integration of efficiency metrics, borrowing private-sector analogies without adapting for public goods' non-excludability and externalities. Bozeman's analysis of public-value failure points out that even when markets underprovide certain values, governmental interventions often amplify inefficiencies through imperfect monopolies or distorted aggregation of citizen preferences, as managers lack price signals to gauge true scarcity.^[57] This contrasts with neoliberal emphases on contestable markets, where public value's holistic approach is seen as vague and prone to subjective overvaluation of interventions, evidenced by studies of regulatory capture in sectors like utilities, where managerial discretion has led to higher costs without proportional benefits as of 2020 data from OECD reviews. Proponents counter that authorizing environments provide checks, but detractors maintain these fail to resolve core agency costs empirically observed in bloated bureaucracies.

Versus New Public Management

Public value management (PVM) differs from New Public Management (NPM) in its core orientation toward value creation. NPM, which gained prominence in the 1980s through reforms in countries like the United Kingdom under Margaret Thatcher starting in 1979 and the United States under Ronald Reagan, emphasized applying private-sector practices such as performance measurement, market competition, and disaggregation of public organizations into autonomous units to enhance efficiency and reduce bureaucracy.^[58] In contrast, PVM, introduced by Mark H. Moore in his 1995 book Creating Public Value, shifts the focus from narrow efficiency metrics to broader outcomes that reflect the public's authorizing preferences, integrating operational capacity with democratic legitimacy and societal well-being.^[8] A primary distinction lies in their conceptualizations of accountability and governance mechanisms. NPM promoted a customer-oriented model treating citizens as market consumers, with accountability tied to quantifiable outputs like cost savings or service delivery speed, often through incentives and privatization.^[59] PVM, however, views accountability as deriving from an "authorizing environment" comprising elected officials, citizens, and stakeholders, prioritizing stewardship and trust-building over transactional exchanges; this encourages networked collaboration rather than hierarchical control or market competition.^[54] Methodologically, NPM relied on tools like performance indicators and outsourcing to mimic business efficiency, which empirical studies from the 1990s onward linked to short-term gains but also fragmentation and erosion of public trust in cases such as New Zealand's 1980s reforms.^[8] PVM critiques this as overly reductive, advocating instead for strategic dialogue and adaptive management to align actions with evolving public values, such as equity and sustainability, though it demands stronger interpretive skills from managers to assess intangible outcomes.^[59] While NPM's market-driven approach yielded measurable efficiency improvements—e.g., a 20-30% reduction in public sector costs in some OECD countries during the 1990s—PVM addresses its limitations by embedding public managers in a holistic framework that balances economic imperatives with normative public goods, fostering resilience against NPM's observed pitfalls like siloed operations and democratic deficits.^[60] This paradigmatic shift positions PVM as complementary yet corrective, emphasizing long-term value co-creation over NPM's episodic reforms.^[7]

Versus Traditional Public Administration

Traditional public administration, often associated with the bureaucratic model developed by Max Weber and principles of neutral competence articulated by Woodrow Wilson in 1887, emphasizes hierarchical structures, rule-bound procedures, and a strict separation between policy-making and execution to ensure administrative efficiency and impartiality.^[61] Public managers in this paradigm function primarily as implementers of elected officials' directives, focusing on inputs such as budget adherence and compliance with legal mandates rather than broader societal outcomes.^[58] Public value management, by contrast, reframes public administration as a strategic endeavor to generate holistic value for citizens, as proposed by Mark Moore in his 1995 framework, which positions managers as entrepreneurial leaders who must navigate an "authorizing environment" of politicians, stakeholders, and public opinion to define and achieve desirable ends.^[18] Unlike traditional public administration's inward orientation toward procedural regularity and resource stewardship, public value prioritizes outward-facing results, including enhanced trust, legitimacy, and collective well-being, often through cross-sector collaborations and adaptive governance networks.^[17] A core distinction lies in accountability mechanisms: traditional approaches rely on vertical hierarchies and audits of compliance to mitigate risks of arbitrariness, whereas public value accountability is horizontal and performative, requiring demonstration of value creation that aligns with diverse public expectations, potentially introducing greater managerial discretion but also vulnerability to subjective interpretations of "value."^[62] Evaluation in traditional public administration centers on quantifiable efficiencies like cost per unit output, while public value incorporates qualitative dimensions such as societal impact and ethical alignment, complicating measurement but aiming to transcend bureaucratic silos.^[63] This shift from traditional public administration's emphasis on stability and control to public value's focus on innovation and responsiveness reflects a response to complex, networked policy challenges where rigid bureaucracy proves inadequate, though critics argue it risks diluting democratic oversight by empowering unelected managers to prioritize contested values over legislated rules.^[64]

Versus Public Goods Economics

Public goods economics, a cornerstone of neoclassical public finance, justifies state intervention primarily to address market failures in providing non-excludable and non-rivalrous goods, such as national defense or clean air, through mechanisms like Lindahl pricing or Samuelson's efficiency conditions for optimal provision levels.^[65] This approach emphasizes allocative efficiency, cost-benefit analysis, and aggregation of individual preferences to determine supply, often assuming revealed preferences via voting or taxation as proxies for demand.^[66] However, it largely confines public sector rationale to correcting externalities and free-rider problems, sidelining broader societal dimensions like distributional equity or institutional legitimacy unless explicitly modeled as additional constraints.^[65] In contrast, public value theory, pioneered by Mark Moore in the 1990s, reframes public sector activity as strategic value creation analogous to private enterprise but oriented toward collective authorizing environments, incorporating not only efficiency but also outcomes in trust, social cohesion, and democratic accountability.^[1] Unlike public goods economics' focus on theoretical optimality under idealized conditions, public value prioritizes managerial agency in navigating authorizing regimes—such as elected officials and citizens—to pursue multifaceted objectives, recognizing that "public goods" often embed contested values beyond economic aggregation.^[6] This paradigm critiques the market-failure lens for its passive view of government as a residual provider, arguing instead for proactive roles in shaping markets and directing innovation toward public purposes, as evidenced in analyses of state-led investments yielding directional thrusts in sectors like green technology.^[54] Further distinctions arise in failure modes: public goods economics highlights underprovision due to non-excludability, remedied by coercive taxation, but public value extends to "public value failure," where even efficient markets or governments undermine core values like equity or stewardship through monopolistic capture or misaligned incentives.^[47] Bozeman's framework, for instance, posits failures when mechanisms for articulating public values break down, contrasting with the narrower economic focus on Pareto inefficiency.^[67] Empirically, public goods models struggle with heterogeneous preferences and dynamic contexts, as seen in challenges quantifying rivalry in digital infrastructure, whereas public value accommodates pluralism via deliberative processes, though at the risk of subjective measurement.^[68] Thus, while public goods economics offers rigorous, quantifiable benchmarks for specific interventions, public value provides a holistic lens for governance amid complexity, albeit with less emphasis on falsifiable predictions.^[54]

Recent Developments and Trajectories

Innovations in Digital and Collaborative Contexts

Public value theory has been adapted to digital government initiatives, emphasizing the integration of technologies like data analytics and platforms to generate societal outcomes beyond mere efficiency gains. This approach involves assessing organizational capabilities for co-production and stakeholder engagement, enabling governments to orchestrate services that align with citizen needs. For instance, the UK's Government Digital Service (GDS), formalized in 2011 and expanded by 2019, centralized digital expertise to standardize service design, resulting in platforms that reduced administrative burdens and improved accessibility for millions of users.^[69] Similarly, Italy's Government as a Platform (GaaP) model facilitates modular service reuse across agencies, promoting interoperability and scalability in public service delivery since its implementation in the mid-2010s.^[69] Empirical assessments, such as maturity frameworks evaluating leadership and technology dimensions, underscore that sustainable public value emerges from context-specific digital transformations rather than technology adoption alone.^[70] In collaborative contexts, digital platforms have innovated public value co-creation by enabling structured government-citizen interactions that convert individual inputs into collective outcomes. These platforms support dynamic capabilities for consensus-building and motivation sustenance, as seen in comparative analyses of 25 service-oriented initiatives where enhanced participation correlated with measurable value in areas like community development and service equity.^[71]^[72] For example, living lab experiments in European contexts have demonstrated that organizational factors like open governance structures yield co-created value through iterative feedback loops, with case studies reporting improved policy relevance and user satisfaction in urban planning and health services as of 2021.^[73] The United Nations E-Government Development Index (EGDI) reflects this trajectory, rising from 0.6102 in 2022 to 0.6382 in 2024, driven partly by collaborative digital tools fostering resilient infrastructure and inclusive participation globally.^[74] Recent advancements integrate artificial intelligence and GovTech collaborations to amplify these innovations, with platforms linking citizen engagement directly to value metrics like trust and efficiency. OECD frameworks highlight how such tools, including AI-driven automation, address public sector challenges while safeguarding values like transparency, as evidenced in initiatives yielding cost savings and heightened responsiveness during crises like COVID-19.^[75]^[70] In China, platforms like Nanjing's Green Commuting app have empirically linked user motivations to dual public-private value realization, based on surveys of 269 participants showing sustained adoption for environmental and mobility benefits.^[69] These developments prioritize empirical validation over assumed benefits, revealing that while digital-collaborative hybrids enhance value, they require robust governance to mitigate risks like digital divides.^[76]

Evolving Debates and Empirical Evidence

Recent scholarly debates on public value have shifted toward its application in complex, multi-actor governance environments, emphasizing strategic mechanisms for value creation amid fragmented authority and societal pluralism. A 2024 systematic literature review of public value in collaborative settings identified 12 governance components—such as shared vision-building, relational trust, and adaptive performance measurement—as critical enablers, drawing from 74 empirical and theoretical studies spanning public-private partnerships and inter-organizational networks.^[77] These discussions challenge earlier, more government-centric formulations by Mark Moore, arguing that public value emerges dynamically from co-production rather than unilateral managerial action, though contested definitions persist regarding whether value prioritizes outcomes, processes, or equity trade-offs.^[78] Empirical evidence supporting public value propositions remains predominantly qualitative and case-based, with quantitative validation limited by measurement challenges, including the subjective nature of "public" preferences and long-term outcome attribution. A systematic review of 413 Scopus-indexed articles from 1995 to 2018 revealed exponential growth in publications post-2010, yet only a fraction involved empirical testing, often confined to sector-specific cases like healthcare or urban development where value proxies (e.g., citizen satisfaction metrics) showed correlations with collaborative strategies but lacked causal controls.^[79] For instance, studies in digital public service transformations have documented improved efficiency in co-governed platforms, such as e-government initiatives in Europe, where public value indices rose by 15-20% in user engagement post-implementation, though external factors like technology adoption confound results.^[24] Ongoing debates highlight tensions in evaluating public value from innovations, where initial gains may erode over time due to shifting stakeholder priorities or unintended consequences, necessitating longitudinal monitoring. Empirical work in public-private partnerships for digitalization, reviewing 74 articles, found public values like transparency and inclusivity prevalent in project designs but inconsistently realized, with success rates varying from 40% in accountability metrics to higher in service delivery speed.^[26] Critics note that while frameworks propose testable hypotheses—e.g., linking managerial legitimacy to value outcomes—systemic biases in academic samples toward Western contexts limit generalizability, underscoring the need for diverse, rigorous experiments to move beyond descriptive accounts.^[78] This evidence gap fuels arguments for hybrid metrics integrating economic returns with normative assessments, as seen in recent strategizing models for public service organizations.^[80]

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