Values and Public Management

Abstract

Public organisations enact values when they implement public policies. They do this in ways that are both intended and unintended, conscious and unconscious. Enactment occurs in a number of modes, as the values that policies aim to achieve are translated into organisational forms, practices and interpretations. ‘Policy’, therefore, from the perspective of the public agency, is a multi-layered phenomenon with many decision-making sites. These sites are, most obviously, associated with the programmes the organisation is paid to administer. But programme administration is, in turn, conditioned by organisational policies, both overt and covert, long and intricate histories involving key stakeholders and arching above all of them, the policies of public administration itself. In assessing the role of values in public management, it is important to consider how the ‘policy’ of public administration relates to all these activities.