What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

This article presents a review of the book “Organizations: Rational, Natural and Open Systems,” by W.R. Scott.

Organizations: Rational, Natural and Open Systems

A new public administration movement is emerging to move beyond traditional public administration and New Public Management. The new movement is a response to the challenges of a networked, multisector, no-one-wholly-in-charge world and to the shortcomings of previous public administration approaches. In the new approach, values beyond efficiency and effectiveness—and especially democratic values—are prominent. Government has a special role to play as a guarantor of public values, but citizens as well as businesses and nonprofit organizations are also important as active public problem solvers. The article highlights value-related issues in the new approach and presents an agenda for research and action to be pursued if the new approach is to fulfill its promise.

Public Value Governance: Moving Beyond Traditional Public Administration and the New Public Management

This article argues that current public management theory is not fit for purpose—if it ever has been. It argues that it contains two fatal flaws—it focuses on intraorganizational processes at a time when the reality of public services delivery is interorganizational, and it draws upon management theory derived from the experience of the manufacturing sector and which ignores the reality of public services as “services.” The article subsequently argues for a “public service dominant” approach. This not only more accurately reflects the reality of contemporary public management but also draws upon a body of substantive service-dominant theory that is more relevant to public management than the previous manufacturing focus. We argue that this approach makes an innovative contribution to public management theory in the era of the New Public Governance. The article concludes by exploring the implications of this approach in four domains of public management and by setting a research agenda for a public-service...

A New Theory for Public Service Management? Toward a (Public) Service-Dominant Approach:

Theoretical and empirical work on collaboration has proliferated in the last decade. The authors’ 2006 article on designing and implementing cross-sector collaborations was a part of, and helped stimulate, this growth. This article reviews the authors’ and others’ important theoretical frameworks from the last decade, along with key empirical results. Research indicates how complicated and challenging collaboration can be, even though it may be needed now more than ever. The article concludes with a summary of areas in which scholarship offers reasonably settled conclusions and an extensive list of recommendations for future research. The authors favor research that takes a dynamic, multilevel systems view and makes use of both quantitative and qualitative methods, especially using longitudinal comparative case studies.

Designing and Implementing Cross‐Sector Collaborations: Needed and Challenging

This new text provides a concise and internationalized restatement of the public value approach, an assessment of its impact to date - in theory and practice - and of its particular relevance to the challenges of public management in a time of crisis and austerity.

Public Value: Theory and Practice

This essay suggests changes to the theory of public value and, in particular, the strategic triangle framework, in order to adapt it to an emerging world where policy makers and managers in the public, private, voluntary and informal community sectors have to somehow separately and jointly create public value. One set of possible changes concerns what might be in the centre of the strategic triangle besides the public manager. Additional suggestions are made concerning how multiple actors, levels, arenas and/or spheres of action, and logics might be accommodated. Finally, possibilities are outlined for how the strategic triangle might be adapted to complex policy fields in which there are multiple, often conflicting organizations, interests and agendas. In other words, how might politics be more explicitly accommodated. The essay concludes with a number of research suggestions.

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Towards a multi-actor theory of public value co-creation

Greater choice in public services has been one of the recent mantras for both the Labour and Conservative parties. This has provoked a flurry of debate in both academic and policy circles. There has therefore been a growing critique of choice as an adequate concept to motivate and mobilize a further wave of public service reform. This lecture will discuss the proposition that a more potent concept to provide a rationale for public service reform and improvement and innovation is ‘public value’.

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From private choice to public value

This paper extends and develops both the theory and the application of the notion of Public Value developed in Moore (1997) Creating Public Value, Harvard University Press, and transposes them into an alternative framework which starts with the public sphere and the collective as the primary units of analysis, rather than with the private market and the individual. The article addresses basic questions about public value, how, by whom and where is it produced, and how can it be measured. It argues that PV often depends upon processes of co-creation with citizens and users at the front-line. It also argues that public value is a contested concept which depends upon a deliberative process within which competing interests and perspectives can be debated. This requires the creation of a well informed “public” with the consciousness and the capability to engage actively in this kind of democratic dialogue.

John Benington

Papers

Public Value: Theory and Practice

Towards a multi-actor theory of public value co-creation

From private choice to public value

Creating the Public In Order To Create Public Value

Public Value in Complex and Changing Times