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In the big picture the existence of government and the use of public authority are justified by the collective benefits that government can create. But if this is what Moore means when he refers to arbiters, it is not a tenable position: democracy does not create a collective "we", it creates governments and governments make laws. Their commitment contributed to the effectiveness of government; their self-belief risked undermining the legitimacy of government. I am grateful to Professors Benington, Hartley, Meynhardt, Moore and Peters for providing comments on my essay, and hope to do justice to their efforts in this response. [Extracted from the article]

Knowability is the ability to identify a preferable course of action with sufficient confidence to justify adopting that course. This article shows it is not possible to judge the value of a public value proposition with sufficient confidence to justify the use of public authority. The indeterminacy of public value is shown by demonstrating that the necessary conditions to justify a public value proposition include that the evidence sustaining it is not impossible, circular, or unsubstantiated opinion. Those criteria are applied to an exhaustive set of possible concepts of public value, all of which fail at least one of those conditions so public value is unknowable. The implication is not that government is impossible, but that it requires humility, discourse, and compromise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Law is a fundamental aspect of public management, but many public management scholars and jurists view each other with mutual incomprehension. The misunderstanding stems in part from incompatible concepts about the nature of government and the nature of people. By combining a legal perspective on the nature of government with a managerial perspective on the nature of people, this article produces law-based management principles that are relevant in any common law country. Officials' actions could be improved by observing three simple rules of thumb: every action needs legal authority; every decision needs relevant facts; and every person may make a case. These principles are not law, but they are derived from court judgments: they are judge-made lore. A central aspect of judge-made lore is the importance and implications of the use of public authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since publication two decades ago, Moore’s theory of public value has become a significant concept in public administration, especially for teaching public managers. A feature of the theory is that public value is assessed by arbiters. These arbiters include a “public as a whole,” which is a disembodied singular entity that is different from the sum of its parts. The idea of arbitration by a public as a whole is critically examined by considering its possible sources, comparison with individualistic bases for arbitration (especially democratic discourse), and exploring the implications of arbitration by the public as a whole. The conclusion is that the public as a whole is an unsuccessful concept which does not assist the theory of public value and which creates significant practical problems for practitioners by understating the degree of ambiguity that is inherent in the pursuit of public value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of Public Service Motivation (PSM) has achieved considerable academic momentum with increasingly subtle research appearing each year. It is now opportune to look back at decades of work to see whether the concerns that initiated this area of study have been addressed. This article uses seminal articles that have shaped the field to find three main topics of interest: a concern about the way that theories of public choice characterized human nature, an ambition to crystallize and measure long-held understandings about a public service ethos, and a wish to promote a practical basis for incentivizing staff in the public sector. The application of PSM to these goals is examined, with the conclusion that PSM studies have made little progress in addressing any of those concerns. The implications of that conclusion are briefly considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the validity of the view that collaboration contributes to public value. The analysis is conceptual and uses graphs to develop a formal statement of public value, collaboration, and government dynamics. The concept of the reason-able person is introduced. The ideal state, the ideal partnership, and conditions for collaboration to contribute to public value are derived. Benefit, support, and acceptability are shown to be necessary conditions for public value to be generated by collaboration. These conditions are shown to link to concepts of management, politics, and public administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public value theory has had its supporters and critics, with debate about the use of strategic management by public managers and confusion about the meaning of public value. This paper formalises Moore (1995) into a simple theory. That theory introduces the concept of an 'ideal state.' The ideal state is a simple means of describing and analysing public value, using a graphical presentation. In an ideal state roles are clear and public value is optimised. Insights from that ideal state are then applied to a more real world to clarify the nature of public value and to consider the appropriate use of strategic management by public servants. The conclusion is that public value theory provides some justification for strategic management, but the paper also demonstrates the limits to strategic management by officials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]