Public Value and Political Astuteness in the Work of Public Managers: The Art of the Possible

Abstract

The public value framework, with its call for more entrepreneurial activities by public managers, has attracted concern and criticism about its implicit breaching of the politics/administration dichotomy. This paper explores the role of political astuteness not only in discerning and creating public value, but also in enabling public managers to be sensitive to the dichotomy. We employ a conceptual framework to identify the skills of political astuteness, and then articulate these in relation to identifying and generating public value. Drawing on a survey of 1012 public managers in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, and depth interviews with 42 of them, we examine the perceptions and capabilities of public managers in producing value for the public while traversing the line (or zone) between politics and administration. We conclude that political astuteness is essential to both creating value and maintaining allegiance to democratic principles.

Identification Of Public Value Dimensions In Pakistan’s Public Sector Organizations

“…Jorgensen and Bozeman (2007) (Cresswell and Sayogo, 2012) Accessibility, Accountability, Performance, (Thomson et al, 2014) Environment value, Social value, Economic value, Political value (Wang & Christensen, 2015) are the important public value dimensions. While advocates of unidimensional public value claimed that public value is consist of Collaboration (Page et al, 2015;Prebble, 2015;Morse, 2010) Political astuteness (Hartley et al, 2015) Co-Governance (Badia et al, 2014) Lean Thinking (Jaaron & Backhouse, 2010) innovation (Taebi et al, 2014). Detail of these dimensions is illustrated in Table 1.…”

“…For example, Anderson et al (2012) provided seven dimensions of PV, Karunasena and Deng (2012) studied PV on five dimensions, Cresswell and Sayogo (2012) considered six PV dimensions, Thomson et al, (2014) confined to three PV dimensions while four PV dimensions were considered by Wang and Christensen (2015). Some scholars considered PV as a unidimensional construct (Page et al, 2015;Prebble, 2015;Morse, 2010;Hartley et al, 2015;Badia et al, 2014;Jaaron & Backhouse, 2010;Taebi et al, 2014). This reflect that there is no consensus on the definition and dimensions of the construct.…”

Swimming on Land: Some Suggestions for Today’s Public Administration

“…Although it may seem trivial to say so, doing so is more controversial and complicated to implement (Hartley et al 2015;Rhodes and Wanna 2007). Furthermore, given the difficulties and problems that overwhelm public employees, few have time to ask, what do we really want to accomplish.…”

How to manage ICTs mediated co-production: a Public Value Perspective

“…Citizens through elections elect the parliament and local councils in order to represent their aspirations and needs. At this first stage, public managers interact with the political sphere to understand what public value should be delivered through a service [17,43]. Politicians formally indicate and authorize the public value that should be delivered through policies and regulations that address and limit the action of public managers [43][44][45].…”

“…The research builds on the strategic triangle of Moore [16][17][18][19][20] and on the concept of assemblage to provide a comprehensive framework that includes all the dimensions that public managers should consider when they are planning the organizational strategy of their organizations. The framework is then applied to explain the organizational strategy behind Transport for London (TfL) that uses an Open Data platform to co-produce the information service about public transportation in London.…”