Value Dynamics: Towards a Framework for Analyzing Public Value Changes

Abstract

This paper presents a preliminary framework for analyzing how values in the public sector change over time. The specific dynamics are conceptualised as three types of change mechanisms: a teleological, a conflictual and a value-internal change mechanism. Choice of governance systems – hierarchy, clan, network or market - is an example of designing control systems to promote particular values. Another change mechanism is rooted in conflicts between values and the actors carrying these values leading to various organisational responses. Finally, influenced by basic properties of a value changes may follow several distinct patterns such as life cycles, pendulum dynamics, enlargement of scope, refinement and turbulence. The possible outcomes of value dynamic processes are basically changes in value configurations: crowding out, sedimentation, the core-periphery hypothesis, division of labour, and re-interpretation. The paper uses examples from a Danish context, but argues that the value dynamics identified have a more universal scope.

Keywords:

• public values
• public value changes
• public value dynamics
• public values and governance

Notes

¹Quite a few scholars have under different labels presented various versions of governance, e.g. Williamson (1975), Ouchi (1980), Beck Jørgensen & Larsen (1987), Dunleavy & O´Leary (1987), Hood & Schuppert (1988), March & Olsen (1989), Beck Jørgensen (1993), and Bruijn & Dicke (2008). In our discussion of modes of governance, we summarize main parts of that literature.

²The analysis of value properties is an under-theorized area. In this section we limit ourselves to illustrating the argument with empirical examples.

³See also the analysis of the history and dual meaning of efficiency in Rutgers & Van der Meer 2010).