Discovering public value in local governments

The concept of public value has gained popularity among scholars and practitioners of public management, but both groups are still struggling with assessing public value creation in practice. The literature has made some... [ view full abstract ]

The concept of public value has gained popularity among scholars and practitioners of public management, but both groups are still struggling with assessing public value creation in practice. The literature has made some advances in assessing the public value creation of individual agencies and networks, but has largely ignored public value creation by comprehensive layers of governments such as municipalities. Moreover, there are very few tools available for comparing public creation across cases and contexts, making it difficult to identify broader lessons for public value management. This paper proposes a framework for assessing and comparing the public value creation of different local governments. The paper systematically extracts the key propositions of public value management from the latest literature and then draws implications for a comparative evaluation of municipalities. This approach generates a practical framework for assessing and comparing the work of local governments in a specific policy domain; the increase of labor market participation of people with disabilities. The framework shows how the emphasis on local customization and fit central to public value management can be combined with meaningful comparisons across public organizations.

The paper is part of a larger project that focuses on studying the conditions for success in and of Dutch municipalities. The concept of public value has a central role in this project. This project is connected to the larger research programme on successful public governance of professor Paul ‘t Hart .