Putting Together the Publicness Puzzle: A Framework for Realized Publicness

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2009.02038.x
• Author: Stephanie Moulton
• Published date: 01 September 2009
• Date: 01 September 2009

Putting Together the Publicness Puzzle 889

Big Questions

Facing Public

Administration

Theory

Stephanie Moulton

Ohio State University

Putting Together the Publicness Puzzle: A Framework for

Realized Publicness

Stephanie Moulton is an assistant

professor in the John Glenn School

of Public Affairs at the Ohio State

University. Her research interests

include public management (managing

publicness), nonprofit organizations, and

low-income housing policies. Her most

recent project evaluates the relationship

between private originating lender pub-

licness and mortgage delinquencies and

foreclosures, initially funded through an

EDSRG Grant from the U.S. Department

of Housing and Urban Development.

E-mail: moulton.23@osu.edu

In light of the blurring between sectors, it is critical

not only to understand public organizations, but also

to identify factors that contribute to the achievement

of public outcomes across sectors. To what extent

does organizational “publicness” lend insight to

understanding and managing for

public outcomes? By integrating

the theory of dimensional

publicness with recent work

on public values, this analysis

presents a framework that

def‌i nes realized publicness as

public outcomes predicted in

part by institutions embodying

public values. Based on insights from neo-institutional

theory, managing for public outcomes, or managing

publicness, requires attention to the combined ef‌f ects

of regulative, associative, and cultural-cognitive public

value institutions.  is analysis concludes with a

timely application of the realized publicness framework

to mortgage lending, demonstrating the importance

of conceptualizing inf‌l uences from diverse types of

public value institutions when evaluating a particular

initiative, such as the Community Reinvestment Act,

and mortgage outcomes.

The proverbial blurring of the public and private

sectors has penetrated the study of public ad-

ministration for at least the last 50 years (Benn

and Gaus 1983; Dahl and Lindblom 1976; Wamsley

and Zald 1973). In light of such blurring, it is critical

not only to understand public organizations, but also

to identify factors that contribute to the achievement

of public outcomes across various organizational

contexts and implementation structures (Denhardt

1990; Hill and Lynn 2005; Lynn, Heinrich, and Hill

2001; Milward and Provan 2000; Wise 1990). Rather

than asking “what makes an organization public,” an

alternative question asks, “what makes an organiza-

tion more likely to provide for public outcomes?”  e

theoretical framework of dimensional publicness of‌f ers

potential insight. In contrast to a dichotomous view

of public and private organizations based entirely on

ownership, dimensional publicness recognizes varying

degrees of public inf‌l uence (political authority) over all

forms of organizations, referred to by Bozeman as the

“publicness puzzle” (Antonsen and Jorgensen 1997;

Bozeman 1987; Bozeman and Bretschneider 1994;

Haque 2001; Perry and Rainey

1988; Rainey and Bozeman

2000).  e key question be-

comes, to what extent can under-

standing dimensional publicness

lend insight to understanding and

managing for public outcomes?

While research on dimensional

publicness af‌f‌i rms the distinctiveness of the concept

(Bozeman and Bretschneider 1994; Bozeman and

Kingsley 1998; Bozeman, Reed, and Scott 1992;

Coursey and Bozeman 1990; Goldstein and Naor

2005; Scott and Falcone 1998), some question

whether this distinction adds any additional ex-

planatory value for understanding public outcomes.

Variables traditionally used to measure publicness

appear to have a modest ef‌f ect, if any, on dif‌f ering

public program outcomes (Boyne 2002; Heinrich

and Fournier 2004).  ere are two possible inter-

pretations of these modest f‌i ndings: (1) Dimension-

al publicness, while perhaps useful for describing

organizations, is not an important predictor of pub-

lic outcomes, or (2) current operationalizations of

dimensional publicness are not suf‌f‌i cient to account

for public outcomes, as would be predicted by the

full underlying theory of dimensional publicness.

 is analysis takes the latter interpretation, introduc-

ing a framework of “realized publicness” to integrate

empirically testable “descriptive publicness” with

public values–based “normative publicness,” thereby

increasing the applicability of the theory of dimension-

al publicness for understanding (and managing) public

outcomes.  is article concludes with a timely applica-

tion of the framework to mortgage lenders. Mortgage

lenders are private actors subject to varying inf‌l uence

from public value institutions (in line with the theory

 e key question [is], to what

extent can understanding

dimensional publicness lend

insight to understanding and

managing for public outcomes?