Organizational tensions in managing public service delivery

Abstract

One way of achieving public value is by policy-delivery through exchanges of product, services and financing between individuals, companies, social institutions, and government. This way complex networks of multiple internal and external actors develop in which public organizations must cope with different logics in often conflicting value systems. Strategies to address trade-offs in the management of policy implementation are key to business optimization and of great relevance to safeguarding public value. In this paper we look into strategy alignment practices of a Dutch municipality that implement a new participatory procurement strategy to redevelop a city park in a multicultural neighborhood. Based on an ethnographic case study research we answer to the question: ‘How do public organizations balance the multiple institutional logics that belong to different public value regimes in safeguarding public service delivery in the built environment?’ Results indicate that there are many obstacles in sufficiently responding to conflicting value systems, originating from a misalignment in application of governance mechanisms. In an attempt to transition to a network type of governance, which is more sufficient for the delivery of public services in todays fragmented society and -public domain, elements of different governance mechanisms were applied at different decision-making levels. More informal ways of organising were only found as addition to the existing formal systems, preventing sustainable organizational maturing in handling the multi-level challenge of managing often conflicting policy goals. We should therefore expand our knowledge on combining ‘old’ and ‘new’ patterns of organizational governance in approaching public values.