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organizational partnerships and networks, and these results in dilemmas of measurement. Benington also highlights the difficulties with defining exactly what public value may result from a given activity, as well as difficulties associated with identifying all the numerous possible public value outcomes. He states that public value outcomes are complex and contested because they might include factors that are not easily registered on public satisfaction surveys.

Parston states that there have been a number of thoughtful frameworks and metrics introduced in the government sector, and that there has been agreement on some underlying principles such as the desirability to achieve balance between organizational productivity and spending efficiency. However he states that there is no clear consensus on how to measure value already created. He goes on to say that there is also no base-line in measurement: ‘Public service organisations do not operate with a simple or even a single bottom line. Public services are intended to improve social outcomes, which can be defined simultaneously along several dimensions ‘ dimensions that are not always commensurable ‘ and that may even conflict’.

Mulgan outlines an alternative approach for judging public value; if considered by citizens that they are willing to give something up in return for it. Benington & Moore state that public value theory requires that any particular conception of public value, be highly responsive to the political authorizing environment, and closely tied to performance measurement systems used to generate internal accountability. It also advocates the creation of performance measurement systems that focus lower down the value chain e.g.client and citizen satisfaction. However close attention to organisational process measures should also be paid given that these reassure us that the organisations are operating fairly, efficiently and effectively.

Mulgan also reviews methods which could be used to measure public value including cost-benefit analysis; welfare economics; environmental economics; social accounting; ‘value added’ measures; and social impact assessment method’. He goes on to argue that paying too much attention to methods which try to monetize public value can lead to bad decisions as monetary value can obscure values. He goes on to argue that all measurements of complex effects are inherently difficult. He says that:

social science isn’t robust enough to make any hard predictions about what causes will lead t