Crafting Spaces: Strategies for Managing Public Needs Agendas

Abstract

This article is concerned with the spaces in which public needs are identified, prioritized, and captured in agendas. These spaces must be crafted as “the public” is not an actor, and is therefore unable to coherently express its needs. These agendas form the basis of the co-creation of public value. We introduce a framework, which is used to analyze the strategic practice of crafting spaces for PNAs. Furthermore, it introduces two cases that describe the strategic practices civil society managers are involved in when crafting PNA spaces and reveal how they influence or are influenced by their institutional context.

Keywords:

• Public value(s)
• agenda setting
• new public governance
• social entrepreneurship
• strategic practice

ORCID

Kim H. J. van Eijck

http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9524-0549

Notes

¹ A shift that seemingly has been occurring in Western European and Anglo-Saxon countries.

² In this transition, three ideal-typical steering mechanisms can be distinguished: traditional public administration (TPA), new public management (NPM), and new public governance (NPG). However, there is no consensus in the literature concerning the exact nature of this trichotomy.

³ The role of citizens is changing, as they are becoming fundamental players in local deliberations and co-producers of public value, in addition to their roles as citizens, voters, clients, customers, and consumers (Alford, 2008).

⁴ This type of focus group is similar to the “executive session,” a method developed by Moore and Hartmann (1999).

⁵ Also see van Eijck (2014) and van Eijck and Lindemann (2014) for other types of strategic practices.

⁶ Also see van Eijck and Lindemann (2014), van Eijck (2014) for other types of strategic practices.

⁷ For the complete typology, see van Eijck (2014), van EIjck and Lindemann (2014).