Challenges to Public Value Creation

“This powerful collection shows that ‘public value’ has come of age… Its reach has extended far beyond the Anglosphere from which it has emerged. And it provides a prism for strategic thinking about how governments are to deal with the grittiness of the contexts and challenge they currently face. This must-read volume sits at the cutting edge of these important developments.”

— Paul’t Hart, Professor of Public Administration, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

“Challenges to Public Value Creation is a wonderful addition to the growing literature on public value creation.”

— John M. Bryson, McKnight Presidential Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota, USA

“The purpose of government is to create public value. While this has become an increasingly accepted refrain in public policy, administration, and management, numerous questions remain about where, when, why, how, and by whom public value is created. With everything from philosophical and conceptual arguments to empirical analyses and cases the contributors to this noteworthy volume. offer new ideas, reveal important insights, suggest exciting directions for research and practice, and ultimately give more substance and shape to the idea of public value creation.”

— Tina Nabatchi, Director, Program for the Advancement of Research on Confl ict & Collaboration, Syracuse University, USA

This volume examines fundamental questions about the public value of public decisions. More specifi cally, it seeks to assess whether all public decisions create public value, if it is possible to know what value for the public as a whole a government decision will create, and how government offi cials can justify their decisions in terms of public value. Leading experts bring a diverse array of perspectives on the normative, epistemological, and processual challenges to identifying, describing, measuring, and evaluating the public value claims that public offi cials often articulate in defending their decisions, and the results that citizens often seek. The book will appeal to scholars and students of public policy and public administration.

Brian J. Cook is Emeritus Professor of Public Administration and Policy at Virginia Tech, USA.