RECENT THOUGHTS

ORGANIZING FOR CREATION OF PUBLIC VALUE – PART I.

Mark H. Moore is the Hauser Professor of Nonprofit Organizations at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a Visiting Professor in the Social Enterprise Program at Harvard University’s Business School. He is also the author of several seminal books in public management, including: Creating Public Value, Strategic Management in Government (1995); Public Value – Theory & Practice (2011); and Recognizing Public Value (2013). The framework offered by Moore in these books regarding defining and producing public value and in recognizing and measuring public value will be the subject of the first several issues of Recent Thoughts on this website.

DEFINING PUBLIC MANAGERS AND PUBLIC VALUE

In his book Creating Public Value, Moore begins by defining the functions and results achieved by government programs in terms more often associated with private sector enterprises. He says that “public managers have a bundle of public assets entrusted to their stewardship.” (p.16) He offers a definition of public managers as “explorers who, with others, seek to discover, define, and produce public value.” (p.20) He says "the task of managers is to judge in what particular ways assets entrusted can be redeployed to increase value of the enterprises for which they are responsible.” (p.39). Further, he suggests that political dialogue is to public sector enterprises what the market is to private efforts (p.48).

Moore says operational managers should seek, find, and exploit opportunities to create public value. Greater public value can be produced by: (1) increasing the quantity or quality of public activities per resource expended; (2) reducing the costs (in terms of money and authority) used to achieve current levels of production; (3) making public organizations better able to identify and respond to citizens’ aspirations; (4) enhancing the fairness with which public sector organizations operate; and (5) increasing their continuing capacity to respond and innovate. (p. 211).

THE STRATEGIC TRIANGLE

In developing a strategy for a public sector organization, Moore suggests that a manager must often meet three broad tests, and he combines these tests to form what he calls “the strategic triangle.” (Each of the italicized concepts described below represent a point on the triangle.)

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. Second, it must be legitimate and politically sustainable. That is, the enterprise must be able to continually attract both authority and money from the authorizing environment to which it is ultimately accountable. Third, it must be operationally 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 production of public value in the public sector. (p.71)

These tests focus managerial attention outward, to the value of the organization’s production, upward toward the political definition of value, and downward and inward to the organization’s current performance. (p. 73) In sum, thinking strategically in the public sector requires managers to assign equal importance to substance, politics, and organizational implementation. (p. 74) Like private sector managers who seek niches in their environment that they are well positioned to fill, so strategically oriented public sector managers might spot new opportunities for their organizations to meet emergent political demands to respond to new needs that were not previously recognized.

THE CHALLENGING ROLE OF PUBLIC MANAGERS

The job of public managers is psychologically demanding, then, because public sector executives must strike a balance between two commonly opposed psychological orientations. First, they must have strong enough convictions about what is worth doing that they are willing to work hard for them and to stake their reputations on the values that they pursue. Yet their convictions cannot be so strong that they are impervious to doubt and the opportunity for continued learning. Their views, the ones for which they labor so mightily and with which they are closely identified, must be held contingently. Second they must be willing to act with determination and commitment while retaining a taste and a capacity for thought and reflection. (p.306)

Those who would lead public organizations need an appropriate managerial temperament – a cool inner concentration which combines the psychological strength and energy that come from being committed to a cause coupled with a capacity for diagnosis, reflection, and objectivity. (p.308)

Managers need to exhibit a certain kind of consciousness: they need to be imaginative, purposeful, enterprising, and calculating. They focus on increasing the value of the organizations they lead to the broader society. In search of value, their minds range freely across the concrete circumstance of today seeking opportunities for tomorrow. (p. 292)

Up Next. In this issue of Recent Thoughts for this website we have explored some ideas about the definition of public manager, the concept of public value, and a useful device known as the strategic triangle. In the next issue we will look further into Moore’s ideas about recognizing and measuring public value.