Public Values and Public Interest - Normative Questions in the Evaluation and Development of the Public Sector

CALL FOR PAPERS

Research workshop at University of Copenhagen, May 28-31, 2008

Conveners

Professor Torben Beck Jørgensen
Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Email: tbj@ifs.ku.dk

Professor Barry Bozeman
Department of Public Administration and Policy, University of Georgia, USA
Email: bbozeman@uga.edu

Professor Mark R. Rutgers
Department of Public Administration, University of Leiden, The Netherlands
Email: RUTGERS@fsw.leidenuniv.nl

Public Sector Values: Frontiers of Research and Theory

Public values have become increasingly important for a number of reasons. In the last twenty years experiments and developments have taken place in most Western public sectors which were unthinkable a couple of decades ago. These changes which all raise value questions include the following:

• New Public Management (NPM) reforms have spread to most countries and with them a likely clash between "modern reform values" and classic public values, since we behind NPM can find inspiration from the private sector, neo-liberalism and the adoption of an individualistic view of human nature and politics. Have core public values suffered from modern reform initiatives or do such reforms provide public values but in new ways?
   
• Increasingly public policy approaches have come to be dominated by the philosophy and discourse of economic individualism. What are the political and cultural roots of economic individualism? Why are policy problems increasingly framed by economic solutions? Why has policy discourse so often involved issues of technical and economic efficiency? Is it possible to develop a public values discourse that has some of the analytical character and rigor of microeconomics-based theories and tools for policies?
   
• We have witnessed a stronger focus on ethical issues in the public sector such as administrative ethics and professional integrity, as well as a concern for the prevention of scandals and especially the development of corruption. This development has lead to a more widespread focus on general principles for proper conduct among civil servants and high level public leadership and in some cases the development of written guidelines. What do we know about the effects of such guidelines?? Do they reflect national cultures or generalized ideas on what is proper conduct?
   
• While there has been a widespread sympathy toward "values based management" there does not seem to have been a follow through in developing concrete approaches for the implementation of values based management. Nor is there clear indication of the processes for adjudicating conflicting values and weighing those values against existing political responsibilities
   
• The internationalisation and trans-nationalisation of public organisations has in Europe dismantled monolithic nation state systems in favour of highly differentiated border- crossing policy sectors. Further, globalisation of the discourse of what is "good governance" tends to result in exporting Western type of "good governance" to Balkan, African and Southeast Asian developing states. What is the success rate of such "good governance" exports?

The inclusion of former Soviet republics in the EU and the possible future inclusion of Turkey transform the union and challenges what little commonality presently found.  What are the public values implications of cultural heterogeneity?

Thus, public administration today, has to deal with value pluralism, relativism, as much as with dogmatism. Sometimes this results in denying the possibility of shared values for public administration, to the opposition others call for administrators as the very guardians of public values, i.e. of the public sphere, democracy and the "Rechtstaat".

Focus of the research seminar

All these changes raise value questions in different ways and points to the fact that values are related to a number of interrelated topics such as

• public management, public administration reforms,
• public-private-sector questions (e.g. PP-Partnerships, contracting out, privatisation),
• culture (e.g. national political culture as well as organisational culture), trust, social capital,
• good governance, public interest, corruption, administrative ethics,
• history of value discourse, political, religious and philosophical roots

Not all issues can be addressed with equal weight. The research seminar will have as its main focus public values in the context of public management and public administration reform.

A central concern of the seminar will be the exploration of the elements of a general value discourse which may include at least the following:

Analytical-methodological issues

- What is the universe of possible public values? Examples include equity, impartiality, justice, honesty, fairness, probity, continuity, secrecy, accountability, responsiveness, and protection of minorities. See Beck Jørgensen & Bozeman (2007); Egeberg (1994); Lawton and Rose (1994); Peters (1996); Rainey (2003); Stewart and Walsh (1992).

- How can values be classified? A few suggestions are available, see Hood and Jackson (1994); Van Wart (1998); Hodgkinson (1996); Beck Jørgensen & Bozeman (2007).

- How do the identified values interact? If they conflict, what trade-offs can be identified? Cf. Quinn and Rohrbaugh (1981); Goodsell (1994).

- What are the historical and philosophical roots of specific values (Gaus, 1990)? The answers are important to understanding and interpretation of actual values, since values always must be understood in a context.

Empirical issues

- Which values are actually pursued in the public sector, across the board as well as limited to certain policy areas or specific types of public services? See Beck Jørgensen (2007).

- How do attitudes and work behaviours of public and private managers differ? Can these differences be traced to fundamental values differences?  See Rainey (2003) for a review).

- How are public organisations, policy sectors, and oversight organisations organized not only to secure the pursuit of certain values but also to secure a certain handling of conflicting values? See Hood & Jackson (1994) and Egeberg (1994).

- What possible management tools or methods are available for identifying, enforcing and/or changing values in organizations and administrative systems? What impact have, for instance, organizational goals, formal value statements, as well as codes of conduct on administrative behaviour?

- What are the cultural bases of values and how do cultural and political forces interact to shape values?

- How do specific values emerge, who protects them, and how do they travel from time to time, from country to country and from organisation to organisation? See Czarniawska and Sevón (1996).

Normative issues

Important normative questions include:

- How can it be argued that some values are more important than others? (Beck Jørgensen, 2006; Goodsell, 1989)).

- How and where can a public domain for addressing these questions be constructed (Fox & Miller 1995, Rhodes 1997)?

- How can we create instruments that may help in everyday situations to discover what is in the public interest? Bozeman (2007).

-What is the practical implication of a disjunction between elite values (e.g. high level public managers) and general social values (as ascribed to the average citizen)?

Program

The research seminar takes place at University of Copenhagen. We aim at a rather small seminar with about 20 participants. The objectives of the seminar are twofold. An edited book and/or a special issue in a refereed international journal are planned as an immediate result of the seminar. The result in the long run will be intensified international cooperation on public values and for that purpose the establishment of an international consortium on public values will be considered.

The seminar is scheduled as follows:

Wednesday May 28: Arrival, dinner, evening meeting

Thursday May 29 - Friday May 30: Meetings at University of Copenhagen

Saturday May 31: Morning meeting at University of Copenhagen. Departure after noon.

Participants must have a completed paper distributed before May 1.

Seminar fee etc.

The seminar fee is 1.500 DKK and covers welcome dinner, two lunches and general costs. Participants who have distributed a paper before May 1 will be reimbursed the seminar fee and accommodation (three nights at certain conference hotels - participants will have details later).

Application

Send application (½-1 page abstract of planned paper) to Torben Beck Jørgensen, cc Barry Bozeman and Mark Rutgers (see e-mail addresses above) before November 1, 2007. We will answer you as soon as possible and not later than December 1.

About the seminar conveners

University of Copenhagen has since 1996 hosted the Public Values Project. A number of empirical investigations and conceptual work has been carried out, resulting in Danish and international publications (Antonsen & Beck Jørgensen, 1997; Beck Jørgensen & Bozeman, 2002; Beck Jørgensen, 2006; Beck Jørgensen, 2007; Beck Jørgensen & Bozeman, 2007). Projects on among other things the value implications of the Danish structural reform of local government and a structural reform of the judiciary system are in progress.

University of Georgia is one of the foremost public administration and policy schools in the United States (ranked 3^rd among the more than 400 accredited programs).  The university is the center for the National Administrative Studies Project, an empirical research program focusing on, among other factors, public values.  Bozeman has been active in research on public values, including his recent book on the topic ("Public Values and Public Interest," Georgetown University Press, 2007).

Leiden University has a well established department of public administration with a very international orientation in research and education. A long running project concerns a historical and philosophical perspective on concepts and values in public administration (Pesch, 2004, Schreurs 2000, Rutgers, 2003). Detail studies on training for the public service, politics and administration, the historical development of public value systems, and the nature of the oath of office are in progress.

References

Antonsen, M. and T. Beck Jørgensen (1997). 'The 'Publicness' of Public Organisations', Public Administration, 75 (2),337‑357.

Beck Jørgensen, T. (2006). "Value Consciousness and Public Management", International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior, vol. 9, no. 4, 2006, pp.510-536.

Beck Jørgensen T. (2007). "Public Values in Denmark - their Nature, Stability and Change. The Case of Denmark", Public Administration Quarterly, vol. 30, nr. 4, 2007, pp. 363-396.

Beck Jørgensen T. and Bozeman B. (2002). Public Values Lost? Comparing cases on contracting out from Denmark and the United States. Public Management Review, vol. 4, pp. 63-82.

Beck Jørgensen, T. and Bozeman B. (2007). "Public Values: An Inventory", Administration & Society, vol. 39, no. 3, 2007, pp. 354-381.

Bozeman B. (2002). Public-Value Failure: When Efficient Markets May Not Do. Public Administration Review 2, pp. 145-161.

Bozeman B. (2007). Public Value in Public Interest: Rescuing Governance from Economic Individualism. To be published.

Czarniawska, B. and G. Sevón (eds.) (1996). Translating Organizational Change. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

deLeon, Peter (1995).  "Democratic Values and the Policy Sciences." Policy Sciences, 49 (4), 886-905.

deLeon, Peter (1998).  "Models of Policy Discourse," Policy Studies Journal, 26, 147-161.

Egeberg, M. (1994). 'Verdier i statsstyre og noen organisatoriske implikasjoner' in T. Christensen and M. Egeberg (eds.), Forvaltningskunnskap. Oslo: Tano. 

Fischer, F. (1980). Politics, Values, and Public Policy (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press).

Fox, C.J. and H.T. Miller (1995). Postmodern Public Administration. London: Sage.

Gaus, G. (1990) Values and Justification.  Cambridge: Cambrige University Press.

Goodsell, C.T. (1994). The Case for Bureaucracy. Chatham: Chatham House.

Goodsell, Charles (1989).  "Balancing Competing Values," in James Perry (ed.), Handbook of Public Administration, San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass, 575-584.

Hodgkinson, C. (1996). Administrative Philosophy. Values and Motivations in Administrative Life. Oxford: Pergamon.

Hood, C. and M. Jackson (1994). Administrative argument. Aldershot: Dartmouth.

Kirlin, J. (1996). "What Government Must Do Well: Creating Value for Society," Journal of Public Administration Theory and Research, 6, 1, 161-185.

Lawton, A. and A.G. Rose (1994). Organisation and Management in the Public Sector. London: Pitman Publishing.

Lundquist, L. (1994). Statsvetenskaplig förvaltningsanalys. Problem, trender och program. Lund: Studentlitteratur.

Pesch, U. (2005). The predicatments of publicness. An inquiry into the conceptual ambiguity of public administration. Delft: Eburon.

Peters, B.G. (1996). The Future of Governing: Four Emergent Models. Lawrence: University of Kansas.

Quinn, R.E. and J. Rohrbaugh (1981). 'A Competing Values Approach to Organizational Effectiveness', Public Productivity Review,  5 122‑140.

Rainey, H.G. (2003). Understanding and Managing Public Organizations. San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers.

Rhodes, R.A.W. (1997). Understanding governance: policy networks, governance, reflexivity and accountability. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Rutgers, M.R. (Ed.) (2003). Retracing Public Administration. Amsterdam: Jai/Elsevier Science.

Schmidt, W.H. and B.Z. Posner (1986). "Values and Expectations of Federal Service Executives." Public Administration Review, vol. 46, no. 5, 447-454.

Schreurs, P. (2000). Enchanting rationality. An analysis of rationality in the Anglo-American discourse on public organization.  Delft: Eburon.

Smith, J. (1991). 'The Public Service Ethos', Public Administration, 69 (4),515‑523. 

Stewart, J. and K. Walsh (1992). 'Change in the Management of Public Services', Public Administration, 70 (4), 499‑518.