No abstract

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), although widely disseminated in the industrial sector, remains underutilized in the public sector. The literature has addressed the relationship between scientific knowledge and decision-making from positivist and relativist epistemological perspectives. Both provide explanations for this weak dissemination and suggest solutions. Several of these solutions were explored through the implementation of a simplified LCA calculator in the public wastewater sector in France. This experiment highlighted the importance of two simplification principles: the first is to provide a calculator that already includes a catalogue of LCA readyfor use; the second is to guide the interpretation of LCA results by reducing, step by step, the number of impacts considered. A special effort has been made on the graphic format used to presents results. These principles can be generalized to other contexts. This work calls for the involvement of management sciences in LCA research and for co-building solutions with potential users. Highlights: • Obstacles to LCA use for public decision are identified and classified • Solutions are proposed and discussed to overcome these obstacles • One of the main obstacles concerns result interpretation • Tests conducted show how much results presentation can affect decisions based on LCA • Principles of simplification are implemented via a decision procedure and new graphs.

At a time when, in France, the central government is placing new hope in the principle of governance of its utilities by means of performance indicators, this article argues that governance through performance measurement and management tools alone, however sophisticated, is not enough to meet the current challenges facing public water governance. However, the debate triggered on the objectives of the performance measurement tools raises substantive issues relating to public water governance. These substantive issues touch as much on the (strategic and organizational) components of the model of governance as on its control system. This is demonstrated by the action research experiment conducted in conjunction with the water utility of Nantes Métropole (Urban Community of Nantes), where the introduction of a new performance measurement tool leads the actors within the system to focus on the question of the values ​​that the public water governance model must carry. These values, which relate to the very ‘public’ and multidimensional component of water, appear in the local governance system under construction as a cornerstone of the model of governance. Points for practitioners In the case of the water utilities where the legitimization of the systems of governance is based on a rationale of technical justification, managerial instrumentation and performance evaluation must contend with the strategic and political vacuum resulting from the weakness of expression of political choices. How, then, to take up the challenge of a dynamic and participatory governance? Putting the objectives of the new evaluation tools into the centre of the debate is a relevant approach to question the ultimate meaning of the action, whose content is inevitably associated with the values that should govern water governance.

Dans un contexte de regain d’intérêt pour la gestion publique de l’eau en France, la question des valeurs dans le management public occupe à nouveau le devant de la scène. Notre article qui s’appuie sur les résultats d’une enquête issus d’une recherche-action, montre en quoi le recours au concept de valeurs publiques apporte des réponses neuves et originales qui restituent le sens perdu de l’action et remettent en question le critère technico-économique dominant de légitimation de la performance des grands systèmes techniques.