Public value theory speaks to the co-creation of value between politicians, citizens, and public managers, with a focus on the public manager in terms of her contributions, initiatives, and limitations in value creation. But just who are public managers? Public value regularly treats the "public manager" as synonymous with bureaucrat, government official, civil servant, or public administrator. However, the categories of public managers represent a more versatile and expansive set of agents in society than they are given credit for, and the discourse of public value has typically not delved sufficiently into the variety of possible cadres that might comprise the "public manager."
This book seeks to go beyond the assumed understandings of who the public manager is and what she does. It does so by examining the processes of value creation that are driven by non-traditional sets of public managers, which include the judiciary, the armed forces, multilateral institutions, and central banks. It applies public value tools to understand their value creation and uses their unique attributes to inform our understanding of public value theory. Tailored to an audience comprising public administration scholars, students of government, public officials, practitioners, and social scientists interested in contemporary problems of values in society, this book helps to advance public administration thought by re-examining the theory’s ultimate protagonist: the public manager. It therefore constitutes an important effort to take public value theory forward by going "beyond" conceptions of the public manager as she has thus far been understood.
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Introductory Quote
List of Tables
List of Figures
List of Acronyms & Abbreviations
Preface
Chapter 1: Introduction
The Public Manager as Protagonist
The Ambiguities of PVT
The aim of this book
The Structure of this Book
Chapter 2: The Judiciary as Public Manager
Public Value and the Judiciary
Judicial Performance
The Strategic Triangle
Judicial Activism and Politics-Administration Dichotomy
Judicial Value Creation
Conclusion
Chapter 3: The Armed Forces as Public Managers
Introduction
Defense & Security as Public Goods
Collective Security & PV Destruction as Creation
Armed forces in non-defense value creation
The Strategic Triangle
Legitimacy and Recognition
Operational Resources
Armed Forces as Arbiters of Value
Conclusion
Chapter 4: Multilateral Public Managers
Introduction
The IMF as institution of multilateral public managers
Who creates value for whom?
The Strategic Triangle
Legitimacy: reciprocal legitimation
Recognition of value: the urgent and the important
Operational resources: surrender and obsolescence
Multilateral PV Problems
Leadership of a World Public
Rhetoric
Value Destruction
Conclusion
Chapter 5: Central Banks as Public Managers
Introduction
The Value Creation of Central Banks
Central Bank Independence the Politics-Administration Dichotomy
The Arbiters of Value?
Strategic Triangle for Central Banks
Legitimacy
Recognition of Value
Operational Resources
Measuring the Value of Value
The Rhetoric of Central Banks
Conclusion
Chapter 6: Conclusion: The Kaleidoscope of Public Managers
Strategic Triangle Approaches
Recent Questions in Public Value
Lessons for NTMs
Interplay between NTMs
Macro-micro
Outfield Value
Politics-Administration Dichotomy
Limitations & Future Research
So who are the Public Managers?
Index
Biography
Usman W. Chohan, PhD, is a public value theorist who serves as Director for Economics and National Affairs at the Centre for Aerospace and Security Studies (CASS), and has been a post-doctoral fellow at UNSW Canberra, Australia. He has previously served at the National Bank of Canada and the World Bank. He was included among Australia’s 50 Top Thinkers by the Conversation in 2016. He has resided in ten countries on five continents and is President of the International Association of Hyperpolyglots, with fluency in eight different languages. He has been a Global Shaper of the World Economic Forum and is today included among the leading Business Authors in the rankings of the Social Science Research Network. His most recent book, published by Routledge, is Public Value Theory and Budgeting: International Perspectives.