Integrated Public Value Creation through Community Initiatives—Evidence from Dutch Water Management

Abstract

Governments are increasingly challenged by self-organizing community initiatives that seek to contribute to or even take the lead in public value creation. The reason for citizen-led instead of government-led public value creation is part of two larger governance trends. The first is the increased specialized, mission-oriented approach to large social challenges by government agencies. The second trend is the increased emphasis on accountability, productivity, and efficiency, following the New Public Management philosophy. As a response to these trends, community initiatives challenge the usual mechanisms, principles, and practices of government agencies. These initiatives are characterized by more integrated and inclusive approaches for dealing with societal problems. In turn, government agencies struggle with the way they can organize productive responses to the initiatives communities take in creating public value. In this study, we explore the rationales behind processes of public value creation in which communities take the lead. We explored these processes in Dutch water management. In this highly functionally specialized domain, we compared two cases in which communities take on leadership for integrated initiatives, including other societal functions and tasks adjacent to water management.

Spatial Planning as a Public Management Tool in Poland: Premises and Reality

“…An interesting aspect of creating public value was pointed out by Duijn and Van Popering-Verkerk (2018), who focused their attention on co-creating, and even taking the lead in creating public value by citizens. This can be associated with the generation of experiential value in the meaning referred to above.…”

The Public Value of Citizens’ Initiatives: Evidence from a Dutch Municipality

“…The “promise” of citizens’ initiatives is sometimes labeled public value (Bryson et al, 2013, p. 25; Brandsen et al, 2017, p. 682; Duijn & Popering-Verkerk, 2018). However, what this value entails is often fuzzy (e.g., van de Wijdeven, 2012).…”

“…Public value is a broadly coined concept that is also used to capture some of the trends surrounding self-organization (e.g., Mattijssen et al, 2015, who speak of “creating value with the public”; Duijn & Popering-Verkerk, 2018). Public value is primarily known through Moore's book Creating Public Value (1995).…”

Unleashing or domesticating the vitality of citizens' initiatives? The paradoxical relationship between governments and citizens' initiatives in the energy transition

“…Since CIs originate in the life-worlds of citizens, CIs are able to address issues that matter to citizens, in a way that matters to them (Hoppe, Graf, Warbroek, Lammers, & Lepping, 2015). As such, CIs are characterized by integrated, multi-faceted approachescombining different issues and (policy) domainsfor dealing with societal problems, as opposed to the fragmented and specialized approaches of the system world (Duijn & Van Popering-Verkerk, 2018;Hoppe et al, 2015). Related to this, CIs have the potential to transform the dominant energy system; providing alternatives and bringing about a change in institutions, and the formal and informal (explicit or implicit) rules of the game that shape the behavior of its key actors (Proka, Hisschemöller, & Loorbach, 2018).…”