Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government

Rating:
Summary: Excellent and comprehensive
Review: An excellent overview of the public manager as a creator of value. Moore does an excellent job drawing parellels to the private sector to illustrate how public managers need to address the needs of their consumers by creating value. The only downside of the text is the high level style of the writing, which sometimes makes it difficult to follow.

Rating:
Summary: Still a key to new ways of thinking for public managers
Review: Mark Moore postulates creating public value as a mode of practical reasoning and an alternative way of conceiving of the public policy challenge in relation with the public administrative enterprise. Moore offers a notion of strategic management in government as a way of linking the traditional study of ends in public policy with the traditional study of means in public administration. Moore postulates a strategic triangle, arguing that a useful conception of public value can be envisioned by managers if they integrate (1) substantive judgments of what would be valuable and effective (2) a diagnosis of political expectations (and legal parameters) and (3) hard-headed calculations of what is operationally feasible. The text articulates ways of thinking about and enacting public value in government, considers approaches and techniques for managing upwards toward politics and downwards toward organizational operations in relation to a wide variety of case studies, and concludes with a consideration of what consciousness or temperament is required of public managers if they are to be successful in managing, effectively and democratically.

The text is exceptionally well-written and is equally accessible to undergraduate students, graduate students, and practitioners. It remains a fundamental resource and an invaluable key to new ways of thinking for policy makers and administrators today.

Rating:
Summary: Strategist and Technician
Review: This book is an excellent source for practising public managers and academics and students who interest in public administration. As time passed, people, their representatives and public managers change or need to change their paragigms. Moore indicates the reason why public organizations must change. Organizational posture and position always must be in accordance with external environment. From the perspective of Moore, public managers must move away from the technicians that work to realize the goals imposed by elected officials with the maximum efficiency to the strategists that analyze the environment and find new ways for creating more value for people. This does not mean bureaucrats are completely free and can think and do whatever they desire. We know this situation points to the demolishing of the democracy. But Moore stresses that public officials must be made accountable for the results and all the time they must be oversighted by citizens, representatives, press, interest groups and public at large. This book is not a How-to-do guide. But we can adapt the principles proposed to the unique circumstances of our organizations.