POLI2108

Introduction to Public Administration

Week 3 Public Values
Dr. Hui Li
Assistant Professor
Department of Politics and Public Administration
University of1 Hong Kong
 Review of last session

 What is public administration?

• The most fundamental distinction between public and private orgs
is the rule of law
 Bureaucracy
 Public administration is the study of government’s decision-
making

 Note: The course is about general introduction to public

administration, not about public administration in Hong Kong

2
The town librarian and the latchkey children

 The situation
• Latchkey children use the library as an after-school day-care
center

3
The town librarian and the latchkey children

 Managerial imagination
• No, it’s not my job!

• Yes
• 1) ask for more money from the town government (tax cut)
• 2) fee-for-service program (working parents; citizens)
• 3) volunteering of parents
• 4) internal: rescheduling, reading enrichment programs

4
The Role of Public Sector Managers

Traditional mindset A new mindset

Administrators, bureaucrats Entrepreneurs, executives

Carry out mandated purposes,

Search for innovations, strategists
technicians

Keep them under firm democratic

control Foster a conducive environment
5
 The aim of managerial work

 In the private sector, managers seek to make money for the

shareholders of the firm (private value).

 In the public sector, managers seek to discover, define, and

produce public value.
• The proper conceptual definition of managerial success: to
increase the public value produced by public sector organizations
in both the short and the long run (Moore, 1995, p.10)

6
What is Public Value?

7
 Public Values

 Bozeman: “A society’s public values are those providing

normative consensus about:
• 1) the rights, benefits, and prerogatives to which citizens should
(and should not) be entitled;

• 2) the obligations of citizens to society, the state, and one another;

• 3) the principles on which governments should be based.”

8
 Public Values: An Inventory

 Constellation 1: public sector’s contribution to society

○ Public interest
○ Social cohesion
○ Human dignity
○ Sustainability
○ Regime stability

○ The public sector must not serve special

interests, it must serve society as a whole

9
 Public Values: An Inventory

 Constellation 2: transformation of interests to decisions

○ Concerns how opinions should be channeled from society into
the public sector.
○ Majority rule, democracy, will of the people, collective choice,
protection of minorities

 Constellation 3: the relationship between public

administration and politicians
○ Accountability, responsiveness, political loyalty

10
 Public Values: An Inventory
 Constellation 4: the relationship between public
administration and its environment.
○ Openness, responsiveness, secrecy

 Constellation 5: intra-organizational aspects of public

administration
○ Robustness, productivity, effectiveness

 Constellation 6: the behavior of public-sector

employees
○ Integrity 11
 Public Values: An Inventory

 Constellation 7: relationship between public

administration and citizens
○ Equal treatment, rule of law, dialogue, responsiveness, citizen
involvement

 Proximity, hierarchy, causality

 Public value is not governmental
 Prime values and instrumental values
12
 Distinguishing public values from other
related concepts

 Public interests
• “public interest” is an ideal, whereas “public values” have
specific, identifiable content
• Ideal vs starting point

 Public opinion
• Public opinion is highly volatile, public values are more stable

 Public goods
○ Non-rival
○ Non-excludable 13
How do we create public value?

15
 Creating public value

 A normative theory of public management:

What should public managers do?
 Public manager as a “strategist” instead of
a “technician”
 The goal of private managers is to create
private (economic) value; the goal of
government agencies is to “create public
value”

16
 Mark Moore’s Strategic Triangle

Authorizing
Environment

Operational
Capacity Public Value

Sources: Mark L. Weinberg, Bicentennial Colloquia, May 2004, adapted from

Creating Public Value, Mark Moore, Harvard University
 Strategic triangle

 First, what was the important “public value” the organization

seeks to produce?
 Second, what “sources of legitimacy and support” would be
relied upon to authorize the organization to take action and
provide the resources necessary to sustain the effort to
create that value?
 Third, what “operational capabilities” (including new
investments and innovations) would the organization rely
on (or have to develop) to deliver the desired results?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=170&v=cO5gnFlSi_c 18
20
A Case

21
22
23
 Discussion questions

 Suppose that you are a government employee, you are

tasked to deal with the graffiti situation in a neighborhood.
How would you address the problem and create public
value?
• Apply Moore’s strategic triangle framework
• What public values are you trying to produce
• Authorizing environment
• Operational capacity

• Think about the librarian and latchkey children situation

24