Stakeholders, public value(s), and public service performance

Abstract

For managers in public service organizations, stakeholders are very important as they have different and sometimes conflicting values. Yet, public administration scholars often neglect the stakeholders despite their vital role in defining good performance in democratic political systems. This chapter combines theoretical perspectives on public values (different understandings of the desirable) with contributions focused on creating public value. The chapter also pays attention to the co-existing and competing governance paradigms that are part of the context in which managing for public service performance occurs. These paradigms provide institutional templates, policies, operational strategies, and desired programs that prescribe how public service provision should be structured and how it should operate. Governance paradigms can be used to understand the links between stakeholders, public values, and public service performance. Giving insight into these links is the key contribution of the chapter. It uses nine illustrative studies to examine how the stakeholder concept and public value(s) are used in the public service performance literature. A key implication is that public administrators can be portrayed as experts who exercise judgment and make consequential decisions in identifying relevant public values, in creating public value, and in generating public service performance.