Recognizing Public Value

Mark H. Moore's now classic Creating Public Value offered advice to public managers about how to create public value. But that book left a key question unresolved: how could one recognize (in an accounting sense) when public value had been created? Here, Moore closes the gap by setting forth a philosophy of performance measurement that will help public managers name, observe, and sometimes count the value they produce, whether in education, public health, safety, crime prevention, housing, or other areas. Blending case studies with theory, he argues that private sector models built on customer satisfaction and the bottom line cannot be transferred to government agencies. The Public Value Account (PVA), which Moore develops as an alternative, outlines the values that citizens want to see produced by, and reflected in, agency operations. These include the achievement of collectively defined missions, the fairness with which agencies operate, and the satisfaction of clients and other stake-holders. But strategic public managers also have to imagine and execute strategies that sustain or increase the value they create into the future. To help public managers with that task, Moore offers a Public Value Scorecard that focuses on the actions necessary to build legitimacy and support for the envisioned value, and on the innovations that have to be made in existing operational capacity. Using his scorecard, Moore evaluates the real-world management strategies of such former public managers as D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams, NYPD Commissioner William Bratton, and Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Revenue John James.

About the Author :
Mark H. Moore is Hauser Professor of Nonprofit Organizations at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Herbert A. Simon Professor of Education, Management, and Organizational Behavior at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He has also been a Visiting Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

Review :
The idea that public managers should operate more like business managers gained momentum in the 1980s, and it continues today. Many reformers and politicians insist that managers should identify the 'customers' for public services and measure agency performance. Moore's new book examines the difficulties in applying this approach to public services, particularly with respect to performance measurement. He argues that private sector methods do not measure the 'public value' created by a wide range of state and local agencies...His case studies demonstrate that it is possible for public managers to incorporate helpful elements of private sector performance measurement, but that it is essential to recognize the special nature of the public value created by public service agencies.