Beyond Efficiency or Justice: The Structure and Measurement of Public Servants’ Public Values Preferences

• Author: Xuejun Wang,Ziqi Wang
• Date: 01 April 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0095399719843658
• Published date: 01 April 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0095399719843658

Administration & Society

2020, Vol. 52(4) 499 –527

© The Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/0095399719843658

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Article

Beyond Efficiency or

Justice: The Structure

and Measurement of

Public Servants’ Public

Values Preferences

Xuejun Wang1 and Ziqi Wang1

Abstract

The public values preferences of public servants play an increasingly important

role in understanding their administrative behaviors in the era of public value

management. Researchers, however, tend to choose proxy or simplified variables

to measure public values preferences, resulting in incomplete understanding of

the underlying structure. Based on survey data in China, this study develops a

five-dimensional scale of public servants’ public values preferences and verifies

the scale’s predictive validity by adopting public service motivation and work

performance as the criteria. From this study, we call for the establishment of a

public values-based public personnel management system.

Keywords

public values preferences, measurement, public servants, scale development

Introduction

Public values have gradually shifted from implicit knowledge to mainstream

research in the field of public administration. Individuals’ public values

preferences (PVPs) can exert significant influence on both organizational

1Lanzhou University, China

Corresponding Author:

Xuejun Wang, School of Management/China Research Center for Government Performance

Management, Lanzhou University, 222 Tianshui South Road, Lanzhou, Gansu 730000, China.

Email: wangxuejun@lzu.edu.cn

843658AASXXX10.1177/0095399719843658Administration & SocietyWang and Wang

research-article2019

500 Administration & Society 52(4)

identification and performance and further form the organizational values

system through formal or informal social networks (Bozeman, 2007;

Frederickson, 1997; Stazyk & Davis, 2015). Scholars have analyzed public

values from historical, societal, and political perspectives (Beck Jørgensen

& Bozeman, 2007; Bozeman & Sarewitz, 2011; Charles, De Jong, & Ryan,

2011; Rosenbloom, 2017), yet in the contemporary era of values pluralism,

the studies of public values of public servants at the individual level that

help shape the organizational public values remain insufficient.

Under Weber’s centralized bureaucracy model, following the organiza-

tional design principles of value-neutrality and minimizing discretion, civil

servants were expected to be administrators who pursue administrative effi-

ciency and political loyalty. The lack of value construction for public servants

has led to an increasing number of serious problems, such as decreased inter-

est in public welfare or the good of the community, failures to faithfully

implement organizational goals and policy, and the mutual distrust between

citizens and bureaucrats. In the late 20th century, the New Public Management

movement advocated in the name of efficiency that public servants should

treat recipients of public goods and services as customers rather than citizens,

which brought about increased critiques of “indifferent technocrats.” Then,

after deeply re-examining the deficiencies of the New Public Management

paradigm, public value researchers redefined the role of public servants.

They believed that public servants should be viewed as explorers who dis-

cover, determine, and create public value with other actors, as well as at the

smallest unit undertaking the mission of public administration and accom-

plishing the government’s performance goals (Moore, 1995). The role of

public servants has evolved from only providing instrumental public services

into managing citizens’ expectations and identifying and responding to citi-

zens’ values preferences (Horner & Hutton, 2011). Under the public value

management paradigm, public servants cannot be motivated toward better

performance exclusively by economic benefits. Instead, public spirit and

PVPs would influence their performance to a great extent. However, due to

insufficient studies, we do not have a full understanding of the actual struc-

ture of public servants’ PVPs, which presents difficulties in finding valid and

scientific measurement scales. What makes this even more challenging is that

the definitions and the boundaries of public values are not commonly under-

stood. Different scholars have formulated rather different definitions for their

own research purposes, leading to difficulties in framing a common system

of discourse around public values (Bozeman & Johnson, 2015).

Studies of public values of public servants in different contexts will con-

tribute to a common discourse in this area. Using survey data from China,

this study explores public values measurement at the microlevel following