Creating Public Value and Institutional Innovations across Boundaries: An Integrative Process of Participation, Legitimation, and Implementation

• Author: Kaifeng Yang
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12561
• Published date: 01 November 2016
• Date: 01 November 2016

Creating Public Value and Institutional Innovations across Boundaries 873

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 76, Iss. 6, pp. 873–885. © 2016 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12561.

Kaifeng Yang is professor in the

School of Public Administration and Policy,

Renmin University of China, and in the

Askew School of Public Administration and

Policy, Florida State University. He is editor

of

Public Performance and Management

Review.

His research and teaching interests

are in public and strategic management,

performance measurement, citizen

participation, and accoun

table

governance.

E-mail: yangkaifeng@ruc.edu.cn

Abstract : Public value creation has become a critical challenge, but existing approaches have limitations and it is

unclear how they can be integrated. This article addresses this issue by analyzing four best-practice cases in which

public value was created through the integration of community indicators and government performance management.

It identifies an iterative process of participation, legitimation, and implementation, with institutional innovations

across boundaries between civil society, politics, and administration. These institutional innovations help integrate the

often fragmented arenas of participation, legitimation, and implementation.

Practitioner Points

When faced with public value problems, public administrators are advised to consider the following:

• Assess the social consensus and disagreements regarding relevant public values.

• Assess and address deficiencies in the institutional domains of participation, representation, and

implementation.

• Develop institutional innovations that facilitate cross-domain linkages and collaborations.

• Practice institutional leadership that infuses values into organizational processes and activities.

• Utilize all public management techniques at one ’ s disposal, such as performance management, citizen

participation, strategic planning, performance-based budgeting, and public–private partnerships.

• Pay particular attention to enhancing capacity in involving and empowering disadvantaged citizens.

Kaifeng Yang

Renmin University of China, China

Florida State University

Creating Public Value and Institutional Innovations across

Boundaries: An Integrative Process of Participation,

Legitimation, and Implementation

P ublic value is a significant challenge for public

administration, and scholars have made

significant progress in exploring its meaning,

identification, fulfillment, and challenges (Bozeman

2007 ; Bryson, Crosby, and Bloomberg 2014 ;

Moore 2014 ). Still, public value remains an elusive

and contested concept. Its two main approaches,

championed by Moore ( 1995 ) and Bozeman ( 2007 ),

have been criticized for either giving managers too

much sway (Dahl and Soss 2014 ) or underestimating

the problems of ideology polarization, power disparity,

and fragmented political structures (Jacobs 2014 ). The

two approaches “have not been formally integrated,

reconciled, or at least accommodated in some way to

date” (Bryson, Crosby, and Bloomberg 2015 , 13).

This ar ticle is an effort toward such an integration.

Similar to Moore ( 1995 ), we define public value as

a summary equivalent of private value in corporate

management, which is measured against the extent to

which a set of public values are realized at reasonable

economic, political, and social costs. Public values are

what Moore ( 2013 ) refers to as desirable outcomes

relating to the quality of individual and collective life

for citizens, and they are influenced by what Bozeman

considers the normative consensus of a society: “(1)

the rights, benefits, and prerogatives to which citizens

should (should not) be entitled; (2) the obligations

of citizens to society, the state, and one another; and

(3) the principles on which governments and policies

should be based” (2007, 17). While Bozeman equates

public values with these consensuses and treats them

as a priori conditions exogenous to the public value

creation process, we believe that public values are

at least partially endogenous to the process. Given

intensive value conflicts in many societies, consensuses

and public values are often negotiated, fought, and

enacted in the public value creation process, in which

existing normative consensuses play critical roles. Our

research question, then, is what does an effective public

value creation process consist of?

We search for an answer from four best-practice cases.

In order to develop theories from cases, one should

avoid making specific propositions or relationships

at the outset, but one should be theoretically

informed by using the literature to articulate the

research question and identify potentially important

constructs (Brower, Abolafia, and Carr 2000 ). Thus,

we review existing approaches before describing the