arket research on the drivers of delight and dissatisfaction in public services showed what causes dissatisfaction if it is not present very often does not cause delight when present and vice versa. Canadian government research showed timeliness, knowledge of staff, courtesy, fairness and ultimate outcome as accounting for 72% of total variation in satisfaction. From this research it is shown that Public Value is maximized by public managers working at the front line, facilitating grass roots engagement ‘harnessing the work of many different agencies’ and steering rather than rowing. Thereby they create responsive, personalized services with choice built around citizens’ needs. Moore articulates this as public managers acting as ‘explorers’ but the essence is a bottom up approach involving experimentation with pilot projects and initiatives to discover what works best locally. However this does not mean that large scale long term consultations cannot deliver public value and that they are more inclined to suffer from consultation overload, lack of the public recognition of the benefits of consultation (strategic patience) and the capture of the deliberative process by unrepresentative vocal groups.
Public Value is also created in more unusual ways such as decommissioning services that are no longer efficient or meet a need and even through inaction and resistance, because of ill-advised public concern. Public Value is thus created by achieving distributional equity, demonstrating fairness and in more extreme circumstances by acting as a stabilizing force in the midst of change.
Thus the ‘Ladder of Public value’ advanced by Rhodes & Wanna offers an incremental method by which public value can be created, depending on the breadth and durability of the authorizing environment, operational capacity and the degree of alignment to strategic goals. At the safe end of the spectrum are minor operational adjustments that would be made by lower level managers briefing and educating the public, making operational adjustments, undertaking customer surveys, focus groups and shaping preferences so informed decisions can be made for the best modes of service delivery. At the high risk end are the ambitious forms of co-production, devolved decision making to client groups and coalition building to support a pre determined vision. Here there is danger of acting beyond or destabilizing the authorizing environment, working beyond operational capacity or outside of the mandate. The goal then for the public manager is to shape and create a collective shared notion of Public Value. Through facilitating discourse between citizens where they articulate their preferences and values, develop an understanding of each others interests the public managers can build interdependent networks and increase social cohesion.
Sustaining & Measuring Public Value
Once public value has been created, there is no guarantee it will automatically be sustained, as authorizing environments, operational capacity and strategic goals are hostages to changing influences. However, as well as adhering to the strategic triangle model of creating public value on an on-going basis, Moore recommends that in order to create value over the long run, an important part of a manager’s job con
