Unpacking value destruction at the intersection between public and private value

Cui, Tie; Osborne, Stephen P.

Abstract

Public services do not always create value. Rather, when poorly organized and/or delivered, they can destroy value and make service users’ lives worse. However, such ‘value destruction’ is presently weakly conceptualized in public management theory. Consequently, this paper is devoted to the empirical examination of value destruction and hence its conceptualization. At the heart of the paper, we recognize the multiplicity of public value and private value objectives in complex public service environments and the dyadic tension between these two value constellations. Drawing upon qualitative data derived from public carbon reduction projects, we establish a conceptual framework. This framework accounts both for the types of value destruction and for the tension between public and private value. Subsequently, the framework disentangles the value destruction concept into four categories: value ignorance, value disproportion, value backlash and value exploitation. Finally, the implications of this new conceptual framework for public management theory and practice are explored.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 30, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Apr 6, 2022
• Publication Date: 2023-12
• Deposit Date: Apr 11, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 12, 2022
• Journal: Public Administration
• Print ISSN: 0033-3298
• Electronic ISSN: 1467-9299
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 101
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 1207-1226
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12850
• Keywords: Value destruction, Public value, Public service logic, Value co-creation, Value
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2863311