A crowding-out of public values? Managerial vs. Weberian values in public sector reform in Latin America

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes whether and how managerial and Weberian value systems can coexist or collide in different organisational settings. We compare six public organisations in two Latin American countries to study whether public sector reforms imply a clash or a crowding-out between these values systems. The article uses data from 60 semi-structured interviews with public officials of different hierarchical levels, in public central government agencies with different ages, modernisation stages, and organisational structures. Our analysis reveals that even in different settings and types of organisations, Weberian values coexist with managerial ones and with other sets of values related to governance or political patronage. We conclude that managerial values do not necessarily crowd out other value systems as previous studies have found and appear to be adapted to the organisational and national contexts in which they operate.

KEYWORDS:

• public values
• new public management
• latin america
• Colombia
• Chile
• state reform

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pablo Sanabria-Pulido

Pablo Sanabria-Pulido Associate Professor School of Government, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia and Affiliate Professor, CIDE México. His areas of interest are public management, policy analysis, organisational behaviour, corruption/transparency, local government, and public affairs education.

Cristian Pliscoff

Cristian Pliscoff Associate Professor and Director of the undergraduate programme in Public Administration, School of Government, Catholic University of Chile. His areas of interest are public administration, State reform, ethics in public administration, public service motivation and public administration education.