Shared responsibility for the common good: Measuring public value across institutional boundaries

Public management research has paid increasing attention to the public value paradigm. Despite the number of studies on the topic, we do not yet have a comprehensive empirical understanding of what happens when the public value paradigm is translated into performance measurement regimes and models. A major issue here is how to integrate public value measurement across networks of business, civil society, and government within which public policies and services are implemented these days. By looking for implications for public management, this chapter aims to offer a set of preliminary answers to the question of how governments themselves should shape policymaking, performance measurement, and reporting in order to integrate the contribution of civil society and private business to public value creation. Presented in this chapter are the results from a case study of a regional government in Italy experiencing boundary- crossing public value measurement and reporting. The goal of the research was to collect information about how measurement efforts at the local level reflect public value creation in a networked setting, about the process that was used for community engagement, and about the extent to which the process to develop public value measurement and reporting is relevant for public and private leaders. As a conclusion, some implications for public management and governance are emphasized.