Putting Together the Publicness Puzzle: A Framework for Realized Publicness

Abstract

In light of the blurring between sectors, it is critical not only to understand public organizations, but also to identify factors that contribute to the achievement of public outcomes across sectors. To what extent does organizational "publicness" lend insight to understanding and managing for public outcomes? By integrating the theory of dimensional publicness with recent work on public values, this analysis presents a framework that defi nes realized publicness as public outcomes predicted in part by institutions embodying public values. Based on insights from neo-institutional theory, managing for public outcomes, or managing publicness, requires attention to the combined eff ects of regulative, associative, and cultural-cognitive public value institutions. Th is analysis concludes with a timely application of the realized publicness framework to mortgage lending, demonstrating the importance of conceptualizing infl uences from diverse types of public value institutions when evaluating a particular initiative, such as the Community Reinvestment Act, and mortgage outcomes.

Developing organizational leaders to manage publicness: A conceptual framework

“…Burgeoning scholarship within public administration research aims to unpack "publicness" (Riccucci, 2010), specifically to identify an organization's "public" attributes irrespective of sector (Bozeman, 1987;Moulton, 2009). Traditionally, publicness is defined as the extent to which an organization is influenced by political authority, indicated through organizational factors such as government ownership, level of government funding, and degree of exposure to government regulation (Bozeman, 1987; In short, the means of classifying an organization's publicness is the degree to which it is subject to governmental influence-be it imposed through the Constitution, the directives of elected officials and their agents, or other legal mechanisms-in providing a good or service (Hood, James, and Scott, 2000).…”

“…Traditionally, publicness is defined as the extent to which an organization is influenced by political authority, indicated through organizational factors such as government ownership, level of government funding, and degree of exposure to government regulation (Bozeman, 1987; In short, the means of classifying an organization's publicness is the degree to which it is subject to governmental influence-be it imposed through the Constitution, the directives of elected officials and their agents, or other legal mechanisms-in providing a good or service (Hood, James, and Scott, 2000). However, the blurring of sectors is evidenced by the breadth of providers executing public services, which is not exclusive to government agencies (Moulton, 2009;Moulton, 2010).…”

“…This reality has motivated scholars to further examine what makes an organization public, and how an organization's publicness may be leveraged to achieve outcomes with implications valuable to the public (Moulton, 2009;Merritt, Cordell, Farnworth, forthcoming).…”

“…Distinct methods of identifying an organization's publicness emerge from the public administration literature: the generic (Murray, 1975), core (Rainey, Backoff, Levine, 1976), dimensional (Bozeman, 1987), and realized publicness (Moulton, 2009) frameworks-with each approach building upon and/or challenging insights provided by the preceding theory. Studies in this area often consider the implications of leaders identifying and managing publicness in organizations across sectors (e.g., Andrew, Antonsen and Jorgensen, 1997;Johansen and Zhu, 2014).…”

“…According to , Public managers often ask some form of this question: "given the organization's mission or objective what are the resources I have available for achieving prescribed public values" (i.e., normative publicness). Empirical publicness directs the public manager to another set of resources: institutional environment and organizational configurations and designs" (Moulton 2009;Shangraw and Crow 1989). A focus on sets of organizations and their environments is less common than is consideration of people, funding, and technology.…”