The Post-Bureaucratic Organization and Public Service Values1

Recent public sector reforms, especially those associated with the new public management ( npm) movement, have increased concern about the state of public service values. This concern has arisen in large part because some advocates of public sector reform pay little or no attention to values and others focus narrowly on the application of private sector values to the public sector. However, a growing number of reform advocates are seeking to reconcile traditional public service values with ‘new’ values arising from new approaches to organizing and managing public organizations, including approaches based on private sector experience. This paper, in its examination of the implications of these new approaches for public service values, makes three major arguments. The first is that reformers should take careful and systematic account of the value implications of reforms. The second is that account should be taken not only of ethical values but of other types of values as well. The third argument is that a statement of key values (often described as a code of conduct), both for the public service as a whole and for individual public organizations, facilitates an assessment of the value consequences of reforms. The first section of this paper provides a framework for analysing public sector reforms and for comparing the extent of these reforms over time and across jurisdictional boundaries. The second section explains the growing importance of public service values and classifies them into three major categories. The third section analyses the values implications of public sector reforms, and the final section draws learning points from this analysis, with particular reference to issues of public service ethics. This paper is in part a response to the recent call by Montgomery Van Wart (1998: xix) for contributions to the creation of a field of public administration values.