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Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government
A seminal figure in the field of public management, Mark H. Moore presents his summation of fifteen years of research, observation, and teaching about what public sector executives should do to improve the performance of public enterprises. Useful for both practicing public executives and those who teach them, this book explicates some of the richest of several hundred cases used at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and illuminates their broader lessons for government managers. Moore addresses four questions that have long bedeviled public What should citizens and their representatives expect and demand from public executives? What sources can public managers consult to learn what is valuable for them to produce? How should public managers cope with inconsistent and fickle political mandates? How can public managers find room to innovate?
Moore’s answers respond to the well-understood difficulties of managing public enterprises in modern society by recommending specific, concrete changes in the practices of individual public how they envision what is valuable to produce, how they engage their political overseers, and how they deliver services and fulfill obligations to clients. Following Moore’s cases, we witness dilemmas faced by a cross-section of public William Ruckelshaus and the Environmental Protection Agency; Jerome Miller and the Department of Youth Services; Miles Mahoney and the Park Plaza Redevelopment Project; David Sencer and the swine flu scare; Lee Brown and the Houston Police Department; Harry Spence and the Boston Housing Authority. Their work, together with Moore’s analysis, reveals how public managers can achieve their true goal of producing public value.
Moore’s answers respond to the well-understood difficulties of managing public enterprises in modern society by recommending specific, concrete changes in the practices of individual public how they envision what is valuable to produce, how they engage their political overseers, and how they deliver services and fulfill obligations to clients. Following Moore’s cases, we witness dilemmas faced by a cross-section of public William Ruckelshaus and the Environmental Protection Agency; Jerome Miller and the Department of Youth Services; Miles Mahoney and the Park Plaza Redevelopment Project; David Sencer and the swine flu scare; Lee Brown and the Houston Police Department; Harry Spence and the Boston Housing Authority. Their work, together with Moore’s analysis, reveals how public managers can achieve their true goal of producing public value.
402 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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December 25, 2016
Manažérska literatúra pre verejný sektor. Každý, kto vraví, že štát by mal byť ako firma by si mal prečítať. Nájsť čo je verejný záujem, mať legitimitu a udržateľne tvoriť niečo, čo má verejnú hodnotu je iné ako riadiť súkromnú firmu. Moore to pekne ilustruje na konkrétnych príbehoch reformátorov. Zaujímavé čítanie.
February 6, 2020
Creating Public Value by Mark H. Moore
This book presents a summary of research, observation, and lecture about public managers’ intents to advance the performance of their organization that are used at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
The purpose of this book, as Moore stated, is “to lay out a structure of practical reasoning to guide managers of public enterprises”.
Who are the public managers this book addresses? The public managers are not only public sector executives –presidents, governments, mayors; but also, officials that are elected to lead their agencies, that are responsible and held accountable for public sector performance: they who have direct authority over public resources.
As simple as Moore put it, this is a book about management in general, but how can we say so when the most specifically directed audience/reader is niche and fairly narrow? The public managers who can essentially employ Moore’s idea are the ones who have high positions. Those who do not have direct authority over public resources, might find this book frustrating as they are not merely in position to change the organization’s strategic direction.
Creating Public Value was applauded for its alternative approach for public administrations. It is an attempt to pull public managers into “value-seeking imaginations” no less than from private sector managers. Moore’s idea was to implement strategic management of public organization. He nominated a set of ideas about how public managers should orient themselves to their jobs, diagnose their situation, and design their intervention; with an intention of succeeding by defining problem and creating public value with the resources entrusted in them.
It is written, “Public managers create public value. The problem is that they cannot know for sure what that is.” Moore stated that value is rooted in desires and perception of individuals, and that public managers should satisfy these desires, to create public value. Then again, what is public value? It is therefore astounding that Moore did not clearly define “public value” throughout the course of this book.
Moore guided his reader through his argument in this book with various cases of public managers. Following Moore’s cases, we learn of how public managers can achieve their true goal of producing public value. The cases are presented to highlight the core of each chapters, from the aim of managerial work, practical method of envisioning value, to strategic management.
In Chapter 2. Defining Public Value, there is no straightforward or a conclusive way to create public value. Moore even argued that “managers should seek ‘to produce public value’ because that is an abstract concept.” Placing the cases in between his arguments could make the reader finds it confusing.
Another issue was, although Moore based his recommendations on more than 600 case studies, lectures, and interaction with practitioners, we are not fully aware that there are any inductive study afterwards about the actual managerial behaviour.
One of the underpinnings of Creating Public Value is Moore’s strategic triangle. Public managers must create strategies that are:
(1) substantially valuable: produces things of value to beneficiaries, overseers, and citizens at low cost in terms of money and authority.
(2) legitimate and politically sustainable: must continually attract both authority and money.
(3) operationally and administratively feasible for organizational implementation.
What is interesting to note is that Moore argued that good strategy is not the one that solve all problems forever, but the one that solve important problem for several years and could give room for improvement and adjustments for some other issues for the next several years.
The strategic triangle aims to simplify complex information demands of recognizing and creating public value, but how can it be validated? Moore’s approach was to use cases to test because it is useful to be applied in a problem-based situation.
In conclusion, Creating Public Value is useful and should be on the required reading for students and public management scholars in order to find connections between theory and real-world cases. It is well-written and comprehensive, with relevant questions and numerous cases to be reflected upon.
This book presents a summary of research, observation, and lecture about public managers’ intents to advance the performance of their organization that are used at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
The purpose of this book, as Moore stated, is “to lay out a structure of practical reasoning to guide managers of public enterprises”.
Who are the public managers this book addresses? The public managers are not only public sector executives –presidents, governments, mayors; but also, officials that are elected to lead their agencies, that are responsible and held accountable for public sector performance: they who have direct authority over public resources.
As simple as Moore put it, this is a book about management in general, but how can we say so when the most specifically directed audience/reader is niche and fairly narrow? The public managers who can essentially employ Moore’s idea are the ones who have high positions. Those who do not have direct authority over public resources, might find this book frustrating as they are not merely in position to change the organization’s strategic direction.
Creating Public Value was applauded for its alternative approach for public administrations. It is an attempt to pull public managers into “value-seeking imaginations” no less than from private sector managers. Moore’s idea was to implement strategic management of public organization. He nominated a set of ideas about how public managers should orient themselves to their jobs, diagnose their situation, and design their intervention; with an intention of succeeding by defining problem and creating public value with the resources entrusted in them.
It is written, “Public managers create public value. The problem is that they cannot know for sure what that is.” Moore stated that value is rooted in desires and perception of individuals, and that public managers should satisfy these desires, to create public value. Then again, what is public value? It is therefore astounding that Moore did not clearly define “public value” throughout the course of this book.
Moore guided his reader through his argument in this book with various cases of public managers. Following Moore’s cases, we learn of how public managers can achieve their true goal of producing public value. The cases are presented to highlight the core of each chapters, from the aim of managerial work, practical method of envisioning value, to strategic management.
In Chapter 2. Defining Public Value, there is no straightforward or a conclusive way to create public value. Moore even argued that “managers should seek ‘to produce public value’ because that is an abstract concept.” Placing the cases in between his arguments could make the reader finds it confusing.
Another issue was, although Moore based his recommendations on more than 600 case studies, lectures, and interaction with practitioners, we are not fully aware that there are any inductive study afterwards about the actual managerial behaviour.
One of the underpinnings of Creating Public Value is Moore’s strategic triangle. Public managers must create strategies that are:
(1) substantially valuable: produces things of value to beneficiaries, overseers, and citizens at low cost in terms of money and authority.
(2) legitimate and politically sustainable: must continually attract both authority and money.
(3) operationally and administratively feasible for organizational implementation.
What is interesting to note is that Moore argued that good strategy is not the one that solve all problems forever, but the one that solve important problem for several years and could give room for improvement and adjustments for some other issues for the next several years.
The strategic triangle aims to simplify complex information demands of recognizing and creating public value, but how can it be validated? Moore’s approach was to use cases to test because it is useful to be applied in a problem-based situation.
In conclusion, Creating Public Value is useful and should be on the required reading for students and public management scholars in order to find connections between theory and real-world cases. It is well-written and comprehensive, with relevant questions and numerous cases to be reflected upon.
September 20, 2017
I only read Chapter 3, but it was fantastic and I want to read more.
"Public managers create public value. The problem is that they cannot know for sure what that is." (57)
Shows what a hard position managers can be in: "As a result, the EPA confronted an uncertain task: no one knew what the principal threats to the environment were, where they were located, or how they could be combatted." (59)
Reasons to protect the environment in the EPA example: "Some sought to preserve the beauty and the aesthetic quality of the environment. Others responded to the threats to human health. Still others wanted to maintain a natural order safe from human exploitation." (59)
"That vision had to embody a conception of public value that the EPA could create for the society." (60)
About the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services: "Substantively, society seemed to be searching for a new balance between its short-run interests in preventing additional crimes by placing youthful offenders in secure confinement and its long-run interests in interrupting the process leading delingquent children into criminal careers." (60-61)
About the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services: "Indeed, although much of the debate about juvenile justice focused on "what would work," it also touched on a different question: how could the system justly deal with children who had committed crimes? Some deemed it just that children be held accountable for their crimes and worried that the punishments meted out in the juvenile court did not establish appropriate accountability. Others thought that justice for children required acknowledging that chldren were less morally accoutable for their crimes than adults, and that society had an obligation to do a great deal more than it was now doing to foster their healthy devleopment... These substantive questions about what would work and what would be just remaiend unresolved." (61)
!!! About the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services: "Th elegislature and the governor both seemed to be claiming that public value lay in the direction of taking more risks to enhance the social development of children even if, in the short run, that effort came at the expense of increased juvenile crime." (62)
"What is striking about these cases is the fundamental ambiguity that Ruckelshaus and Miller faced in leading their organizations. Importantly, the ambiguity concerned ends as well as means. Ruckelshaus was not clearly instructed about how the costs of envirnnmental cleanup should be traded off agaainst the benefits of a prettier, safer, or more pristine environment. Nor was Miller told how he should balance short-run crime control aganst uncertain prospects of rehabilitation." (62)
Public value can mean very different things at the same time: "Nearly always, the politics surrounding a public enterprise are sufficiently contentious to suggest several different plausible and sustainable conceptions of public value." (63) In my own words: What’s tricky is that at any given point in time, the political climate is varied enough that there can be more than one plausible and sustainable way to create public value.
"Each day,their organizations' operations consume public resources. Each day, these operations produce real consequences for society - intended or not. If the managers cannot account for the value of these efforts with both a story and demonstrated accomplishments, then the legitimary of their interprise is undermined and, with that, their capacity to lead." (67)
The three vertices of the triangle form an organizational strategy adapted for the public sector. The organizational strategy is a concept that requires simultaneously:
1)Declaring the overall mission or purpose of an organization (cast in terms of important public values).
2)Offering an account of the sources of support and legitimacy that will be tapped to sustain society’s commitment of the enterprise; and
3) Explaining how the enterprise will have to be organized and operated to achieve the declared objectives.
The following three elements need to be in coherent alignment:
1)First, the strategy must be substantively valuable in the sense that the organization “produces things of value to overseers, clients, and beneficiaries at low cost in terms of money and authority.
2) “Second, it must be legitimate and politically sustainable. That is, the enterprise must be able to continually attract both authority and money from the political authorizing environment to which it is ultimately accountable.”
3) “Third, it must be operationally and administratively feasible in that the authorized, valuable activities can actually be accomplished by the existing organization with help from others who can be induced to contribute to the organization’s goal.
These tests are powerful because they identify the necessary conditions for the production of value in the public sector. (71)
"Whereas there was enough objective evidence to sustain a broad public enthusiam for attacking environmental pollution, there was nothing but a contested sociological theory and a sense of justice to indicate the wisdom of humanizing treatment for juvenile offenders." (85)
Miller is intelligent, good strategy: "At first, Miller sought to implement his strategy by changing the institutions thsmselves. He eliminated rules governing haircuts and dress, and thereby eliminated a source of power that the custodial staff had used to enforce discipline within the institutions. He also toured the institutions, 'trying to find people who shared his goals,' and authorized them to initiate new programs regardless of their status in the organization's hierarchy. He drew colunteers into the institutions to run new programs for the children. Perhaps most important, he encouraged the children to speak out about the conditions and to come to him with any complaints about staff behavior. These changed had a revolutionary impact inside the instiututions: they not only altered existing politicis and procedures but also shattered previously fixed and established relationships between the staffa nd the kids." (85)
How Miller thought about change: "Although these reforms created turmoil within the institutions, Miller eventually became convinced that it was impossible to make important changes in the way kids were treated within the structure of the existing instutions . DYS, he said, was 'like China': it would absorb all efforts at reform and remain unchanged." (85)
As Moore puts it, “the politics of a situation can accommodate many different ideas” (94).
"Public managers create public value. The problem is that they cannot know for sure what that is." (57)
Shows what a hard position managers can be in: "As a result, the EPA confronted an uncertain task: no one knew what the principal threats to the environment were, where they were located, or how they could be combatted." (59)
Reasons to protect the environment in the EPA example: "Some sought to preserve the beauty and the aesthetic quality of the environment. Others responded to the threats to human health. Still others wanted to maintain a natural order safe from human exploitation." (59)
"That vision had to embody a conception of public value that the EPA could create for the society." (60)
About the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services: "Substantively, society seemed to be searching for a new balance between its short-run interests in preventing additional crimes by placing youthful offenders in secure confinement and its long-run interests in interrupting the process leading delingquent children into criminal careers." (60-61)
About the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services: "Indeed, although much of the debate about juvenile justice focused on "what would work," it also touched on a different question: how could the system justly deal with children who had committed crimes? Some deemed it just that children be held accountable for their crimes and worried that the punishments meted out in the juvenile court did not establish appropriate accountability. Others thought that justice for children required acknowledging that chldren were less morally accoutable for their crimes than adults, and that society had an obligation to do a great deal more than it was now doing to foster their healthy devleopment... These substantive questions about what would work and what would be just remaiend unresolved." (61)
!!! About the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services: "Th elegislature and the governor both seemed to be claiming that public value lay in the direction of taking more risks to enhance the social development of children even if, in the short run, that effort came at the expense of increased juvenile crime." (62)
"What is striking about these cases is the fundamental ambiguity that Ruckelshaus and Miller faced in leading their organizations. Importantly, the ambiguity concerned ends as well as means. Ruckelshaus was not clearly instructed about how the costs of envirnnmental cleanup should be traded off agaainst the benefits of a prettier, safer, or more pristine environment. Nor was Miller told how he should balance short-run crime control aganst uncertain prospects of rehabilitation." (62)
Public value can mean very different things at the same time: "Nearly always, the politics surrounding a public enterprise are sufficiently contentious to suggest several different plausible and sustainable conceptions of public value." (63) In my own words: What’s tricky is that at any given point in time, the political climate is varied enough that there can be more than one plausible and sustainable way to create public value.
"Each day,their organizations' operations consume public resources. Each day, these operations produce real consequences for society - intended or not. If the managers cannot account for the value of these efforts with both a story and demonstrated accomplishments, then the legitimary of their interprise is undermined and, with that, their capacity to lead." (67)
The three vertices of the triangle form an organizational strategy adapted for the public sector. The organizational strategy is a concept that requires simultaneously:
1)Declaring the overall mission or purpose of an organization (cast in terms of important public values).
2)Offering an account of the sources of support and legitimacy that will be tapped to sustain society’s commitment of the enterprise; and
3) Explaining how the enterprise will have to be organized and operated to achieve the declared objectives.
The following three elements need to be in coherent alignment:
1)First, the strategy must be substantively valuable in the sense that the organization “produces things of value to overseers, clients, and beneficiaries at low cost in terms of money and authority.
2) “Second, it must be legitimate and politically sustainable. That is, the enterprise must be able to continually attract both authority and money from the political authorizing environment to which it is ultimately accountable.”
3) “Third, it must be operationally and administratively feasible in that the authorized, valuable activities can actually be accomplished by the existing organization with help from others who can be induced to contribute to the organization’s goal.
These tests are powerful because they identify the necessary conditions for the production of value in the public sector. (71)
"Whereas there was enough objective evidence to sustain a broad public enthusiam for attacking environmental pollution, there was nothing but a contested sociological theory and a sense of justice to indicate the wisdom of humanizing treatment for juvenile offenders." (85)
Miller is intelligent, good strategy: "At first, Miller sought to implement his strategy by changing the institutions thsmselves. He eliminated rules governing haircuts and dress, and thereby eliminated a source of power that the custodial staff had used to enforce discipline within the institutions. He also toured the institutions, 'trying to find people who shared his goals,' and authorized them to initiate new programs regardless of their status in the organization's hierarchy. He drew colunteers into the institutions to run new programs for the children. Perhaps most important, he encouraged the children to speak out about the conditions and to come to him with any complaints about staff behavior. These changed had a revolutionary impact inside the instiututions: they not only altered existing politicis and procedures but also shattered previously fixed and established relationships between the staffa nd the kids." (85)
How Miller thought about change: "Although these reforms created turmoil within the institutions, Miller eventually became convinced that it was impossible to make important changes in the way kids were treated within the structure of the existing instutions . DYS, he said, was 'like China': it would absorb all efforts at reform and remain unchanged." (85)
As Moore puts it, “the politics of a situation can accommodate many different ideas” (94).
May 28, 2021
Admittedly, this is a niche topic, and it's an older book so a bit dense and dry in places. However, it is thorough and excellent. The end notes are exhaustive, and at least for the first section are worth flipping back constantly to read. My general summary is below. So spoilers?
----
Public managers should seek/create/exploit opportunities to create public value both by strategic design and opportunistically. Passion and commitment must be balanced with an ability to engage with and learn from opposing views (insofar as they are expressing a competing vision of what constitutes public value). Management of an organization should be down (into the org.), but also up (into the political environment) and out (into the public realm) and include both messaging and building support for actions.
Success requires producing substantive value, administrative feasibility, and political sustainability. If any legs of the triangle are missing, the endeavor will fail. Therefore:
1) Identify/create/exploit areas of value creation
2) Know the limits of administrative/operational capacity and seek to expand and develop without straining too far.
3) Manage the politics to maintain legitimacy and support without undermining the tenets of democracy (role of politics and voting in conveying what public value is).
----
Public managers should seek/create/exploit opportunities to create public value both by strategic design and opportunistically. Passion and commitment must be balanced with an ability to engage with and learn from opposing views (insofar as they are expressing a competing vision of what constitutes public value). Management of an organization should be down (into the org.), but also up (into the political environment) and out (into the public realm) and include both messaging and building support for actions.
Success requires producing substantive value, administrative feasibility, and political sustainability. If any legs of the triangle are missing, the endeavor will fail. Therefore:
1) Identify/create/exploit areas of value creation
2) Know the limits of administrative/operational capacity and seek to expand and develop without straining too far.
3) Manage the politics to maintain legitimacy and support without undermining the tenets of democracy (role of politics and voting in conveying what public value is).
July 28, 2018
Het standaardwerk over publieke waarde. Pittige kost, maar heel verhelderend en nuttig voor overheidsorganisaties. Zie mijn samenvatting op https://t.co/2yH2ZeW07f
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March 26, 2022Mark Moore is the father of the strategic triangle. I learned so much about creating public value from the master. there is no one better.
May 12, 2010
This was a college textbook for me. I must say that after reading it, I understand the trials and tribulations of creating public value and even retain some good case studies I could toss out at a cocktail party. This is interesting stuff: part science, part charisma, and part timing.
July 22, 2009
It was a bunch of case studies digested and regurgitated for what a public manager is to do. I liked the first part when it discussed adding value to the public.
April 14, 2013
The best introduction to a key concept for understanding how to improve public services using the idea of public value. This will change your way of thinking about government - for the better
August 1, 2013
A book on managerial theory that has some dry parts along with multiple examples.
May 22, 2014
Loved this book I read for grad school...merging conversations about public policy and creating change in an accessible book.
January 17, 2016
A "business book" for executives of social service agencies. A good transcendence of theory across two seemingly unrelated fields.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews