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Leadership for public value: Political astuteness as a

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How to cite:
Hartley, Jean; Sancino, Alessandro; Bennister, Mark and Resodihardjo, Sandra L. (2019). Leadership for public value:
Political astuteness as a conceptual link. Public Administration, 97(2) pp. 239–249.

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 Leadership for public value:

Political astuteness as a conceptual link

Jean Hartley1, Alessandro Sancino1, Mark Bennister2, Sandra L. Resodihardjo3

1
The Open University, UK

2
University of Lincoln, UK

3
Radboud University, Netherlands.

Accepted for publication in Public Administration (4*)

To be cited as:

Hartley, J., Sancino, A., Bennister, M., Resodihardjo, S.L. (forthcoming) ‘Leadership for
Public Value – Political Astuteness as a Conceptual Link’, Public Administration. DOI:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/padm.12597

Abstract

Both leadership and public value are increasingly seen as concepts highly relevant to public
administration, not only because of complex societal challenges but also as ways to address
pluralistic interests in society. This article explores the varied conceptualisations of public
value and of public leadership in detail. Furthermore, we argue that political astuteness
provides an important conceptual linkage between leadership and public value, enabling actors
to read, understand and foster coalitions around diverse and sometimes competing interests. In
this introduction to the symposium, we analyse the different conceptualisations of public value,
of leadership, and also show how the six articles explicitly or implicitly draw on the linking
concept of political astuteness. The article assesses how the six articles of the symposium
contribute to each of these three concepts.

1
1. Introduction

Profound societal, political and institutional changes driven by rapid technological and
economic transformation are pushing scholars and practitioners of public administration to
address new, complex, urgent and often wicked challenges (Head and Alford 2015). Public
leadership has been advocated as a key element in addressing these challenges, potentially
discerning, shaping, nurturing and facilitating public value (Bennister 2016; ’t Hart 2014;
Pedersen and Hartley 2008). Emerging ideas about ‘polycentric’, ‘pluricentric’ or decentred
governance, based on interdependence, negotiation and trust have been welcome approaches
in the field (see Bevir 2011; Sørensen and Torfing 2016) and contribute to the sense that it is
timely to be examining the concepts of public value and of leadership.

With this particular context in mind – and with the call to expand our conceptual, empirical
and place-based understanding of the role of public leadership – we, as editors, took the
opportunity to reflect on the contemporary role of public leadership in the recognition,
creation or destruction of public value. The 2017 PUPOL1 (Public and Political Leadership
Network) international conference brought together scholars to focus directly on that theme
and this symposium represents the fruits of that exercise.

In this special issue, we reflect on key conceptual and empirical developments in the fields of
public value and public leadership to set the scene for the symposium. We show how these
two concepts are and can be linked. This introduction also brings in a third concept – political
astuteness (that is, a set of capabilities also known as political awareness, ‘nous’ or political
savvy) –as a way to connect public value and public leadership. This is because both public
value and public leadership are premised on multiple and sometimes competing interests
among stakeholders. Understanding and acting upon these varied interests is, we argue, part
of a set of core capabilities that help public leaders to create public value. In this introduction
to the symposium, we show how the symposium’s contributors explicitly or implicitly refer

1
The Public and Political Leadership (PUPOL) is an international academic network of over 100 scholars
interested in and working on leadership in Public Administration & Management, Organization Studies,
Political Science, Non-Profit Management & Civil Society Studies. More information is available at
https://www.pupolnetwork.com

2
to the importance of political astuteness underlying public leadership and the creation of
public value.

Each article in this symposium presents a particular case study, adding new perspectives to
the field from a range of countries and, significantly, addressing a wide variety of societal
challenges. The cases vary: from algorithmic challenges to public authorities; knowledge
mobilisation for a congestion charge zone in Milan; soft meta-governance as leadership with
the Bristol£ social enterprise; informal relationships between government officials and civil
society organisation practitioners; addressing policy tensions about working with indigenous
communities; and contest and conflict about policing. Together, they reveal how multiple
actors and forms of public leadership can and do step forward or emerge to facilitate public
value creation.

In this introduction to the symposium, the varied and common conceptual approaches to
public value and leadership inherent in the articles are explored. In doing so, it became
evident that public administration/management has entered an era of complex societal
challenges in which multiple actors cooperate or compete together (co-governance) to create
(or deplete) public value. Furthermore, we found that political astuteness formed an important
conceptual linkage across the articles – either implicitly or explicitly.

The articles in this symposium take forward the understanding of public value in several
ways. First, they add to the empirical research base about public value theory. This base has
been surprisingly lacking, despite the philosophical, theoretical and policy interest in the
concept (Hartley et al. 2017). The rich, empirical case studies here demonstrate how public
value can illuminate a wide range of contexts and raise new and interesting questions.
Second, this symposium highlights that public value theory can be deployed to analyse
complex, contested issues, not only in organizations but also across dynamic networks and
groups jostling for attention within society. Third, the articles show that ‘publics’ are varied
and furthermore that contention, dispute, debate and dialogue shape public value and how
leaders try to construct public value. Thus, leadership can be consensual, but also importantly
it can be contestable. Lastly, the articles show the importance of certain capabilities (falling
under the heading of political astuteness) for leaders when attempting to create public value.

2. Public Value

3
Public value theory is the outcome being analysed as well as the conceptual starting point and
the common thread of the symposium. It is therefore helpful to set out some of the key
strands in public value theory, while considering both the concept itself, and its constituent
components of ‘public’ and ‘value’. Table 1, below, summarises the perspectives on public
value theory taken by four key authors who have influenced the development of subsequent
research and thinking.

The concept of public value was initiated by Moore (1995) in a seminal work which grappled
with how to theorise and assess the public equivalent of private sector shareholder value. This
required conceptualising not only what happened inside organizational boundaries, but
outside them, in terms of outcomes which are seen as valuable to society. An offshoot of the
original work utilises the strategic triangle as a tool for public managers to use.

Benington (2011, 2015) extended thinking about public value by theorising two dimensions
of public value, and, crucially, setting this in the context of the public sphere. He argued that
the creation of public value is a contested democratic practice (Benington 2015). He drew on
the work of Habermas (1962) and others to define the public sphere as a democratic space
that includes the “web of values, places, organizations, rules, knowledge, and other cultural
resources held in common by people through their everyday commitments and behaviours
and held in trust by government and public institutions” (Benington 2011, p. 43). The public
sphere “provides a society with some sense of belonging, meaning, purpose and continuity,
and which enables people to thrive and strive amid uncertainty” (Benington 2011, p. 43).

Bozeman (2007) and Meynhardt (2009) also conceptualised what is public value and how it
is created in and for society, but these approaches are generally seen as originating from a
different starting point than either Moore and Benington (who have themselves collaborated
on public value theory and practice (Benington and Moore 2011)). Table 1 includes all four
authors for completeness, but interestingly only the first two are deployed in the symposium
articles.

---------------------------------------

Table 1 about here

---------------------------------------

Turning to the symposium articles, they show the diversity of thinking about public value,
and they also illustrate an exciting variety of purposes to which public value theory and its

4
constituent frameworks can be put. They range from articles which deploy Moore’s strategic
triangle (Ayres 2018; Brown and Head 2018); use both Moore and Benington (Andrews
2018); use Benington (Hartley et al. 2018; Teasdale and Dey 2019) and one article which is
less definite about its approach to public value, but which assumes that endeavours by public
servants and civil society actors can create public value by reducing air pollution (Trivellato
et al. 2018). These articles move the field forward, heeding the call of Hartley et al. (2017)
for scholars to be clear about which strand of public value theory they are drawing on.

The symposium authors utilize public value in a variety of intellectual ways. Andrews (2018)
uses Moore’s analytical framework to diagnose actions taken by UK government to be
‘governance-ready’ for new wicked challenges. The use of public value helps to show where
gaps exist in the regulatory and democratic approach to big data and algorithms and these
provide clues about how the approach could be modified to benefit society. Ayres (2018)
uses Moore’s strategic triangle to interrogate how soft meta-governance (broadly, face-to-
face relational leadership) is enacted by the leadership of a social enterprise interacting within
a network of state, private and voluntary organizations. The use of the strategic triangle
framework enables Ayres to disentangle strategic processes of considerable complexity over
time. Brown and Head (2018) also deploy Moore’s strategic triangle but use it to both analyse
and evaluate how far public managers (the original set of actors in public value theory) are
able to achieve new policy goals, when earlier institutional logics (Reay and Hinings 2009)
are still in play. In both of these cases, public value is a theoretical tool applied to understand
a complex and wicked societal challenge. Hartley et al. (2018) draw on Benington (2011) to
focus on public value as the tension between what is valued by members of the public and
what adds value to the public sphere. They test how far this approach to public value
illuminates theory in relation to the role of the police in not only providing a service, but also
working across a leadership constellation (Denis et al. 2001), where there are contested views
among different stakeholders about what value is and how it could be created. Teasdale and
Dey (2019), drawing on Benington (2015), frame public value as a contested democratic
practice which changes over time and can be altered through debate, showing that there might
be an ongoing tension between the public value constructed and argued for by different civil
society groups, and the political objectives of government. Trivellato et al. (2018) deploy
public value as the desirable outcome of complex leadership and knowledge mobilisation
processes.

5
Just as public value is deployed in different ways by the different articles, so the concept of
the ‘public’ varies in these articles. Andrews’ (2018) article has a strong sense of different
stakeholders with different interests in big data (private companies, public services, citizens),
with the role of the state in upholding important values for democratic societies. Ayres (2018)
also deconstructs the varied interests of different stakeholders, not only across but also within
sectors, and exposes a sense of a real struggle for the soul of the social enterprise which is the
focal organization in the case study. Her reference to a tipping point recognises the dynamic
nature of different interests – and also different societal values (for example democratic
legitimacy vs. flexibility). Brown and Head (2018) largely seem to hold the view that there is
a public interest (singular) though they do note that public value can be contested by different
stakeholders. Teasdale and Dey (2019) use a Foucauldian governmentality perspective with
the example of neoliberal governing through social enterprises to highlight how political
philosophies and governmental technologies can foster a more sustainable public space. For
Trivellato et al. (2018) there are also multiple interests which require particular leadership
skills involving orchestration, mediation and negotiation. Hartley et al. (2018) present not
only multiple stakeholders (who have interests, whether private or public), but also multiple
publics. In their study of rural crime, different publics urged different solutions and
leadership was exercised by a range of groups not only the police. Consequently, the police
leadership had to bring people together to listen and to talk in the public sphere, before a
degree of public value consensus could be reached. The article also examines who is
excluded from the public sphere, so the assumption that contest and conflict necessarily give
way to collaboration is inaccurate.

3. Leadership for Public Value

What is the role of leadership in creating or destroying public value? There is a growing
literature on public leadership (e.g. Chapman et al. 2016; Crosby and Bryson 2018; Hartley
2018; Orr and Bennett 2017; Ospina 2017; Tummers and Knies 2016). However, few
contributions explicitly link leadership with public value other than Benington and Turbitt
(2007), Hartley (2018) and Morse (2010). This is somewhat surprising given the growth of
academic and policy interest over the last two decades in each of the concepts of public
leadership and public value. Therefore, this symposium provides an important opportunity to
explore the varied relationships between leadership and public value, in both theoretical and

6
empirical terms. This is timely, as public leadership scholars have developed a distinctive
approach to leadership which recognizes the importance of public context and purpose.
Concurrently, political science has been re-assessing the salience of leadership in political
processes (Bennister et al. 2017). It is also timely in that the concept of public value is now a
more established concept, particularly in public management and administration studies. To
bring both concepts together is an important contribution to the two literatures and to their
inter-relationships.

The focus in the articles here is not only on leaders (within and outside public organizations)
but also on leadership, taken here to be a set of relational processes of influence, mobilization
and direction among different actors, groups, organizations and networks. These relational
processes are embedded within society, shaped by context and circumstance. A focus on
leadership as a set of relational processes (Uhl-Bien et al. 2007) suggests that leadership for
public value is thus not only about personal skills but involves influence between actors and
groups.

This symposium highlights that leadership for public value can be exhibited by citizens and
social groups (Brown and Head 2018; Hartley et al. 2018), social enterprises, charities, and
civil society organizations (Ayres 2018; Teasdale and Dey 2019), and also by private
corporations (Andrews 2018) as well as by public organizations. Public leadership is not only
about leadership from within public organizations but is about leadership which impacts on
the public (Hartley 2018). Alford (2016), among others, points out that ‘public’ is best
defined by who benefits rather than solely by who contributes. The public value literature has
also emphasised multi-actor influence – away from a focus solely on those employed by the
state (Bryson et al. 2017; Sancino et al. 2018).

Where leadership occurs is a matter of significance and the location can influence public
value. Leadership processes may happen in informal spaces (Ayres 2018; Brown and Head
2018; Hartley et al. 2018); in liminal spaces across organisations (Trivellato et al. 2018); in
symbolic spaces of loss and displacement of public value (Hartley et al. 2018); in hidden
spaces “where public managers and civil society practitioners deviate from official mandates”
(Teasdale and Dey 2019); and in grappling with public and private issues about big data and
technological algorithms (Andrews et al. 2018).

Leadership for public value raises the question of what leadership is aiming to bring about.
Somewhat surprisingly, there is less literature about the purposes of leadership than might be

7
expected (Kempster et al. 2011). In this respect, a focus on leadership for public value shows
a relentless interest in strategic goals and value being achieved, not solely social processes.
Consequently, collaboration and partnership might be a means not an end in many situations.
Leadership for public value also involves engaging in implicit or explicit decision making
about what has public value, who is included and who is excluded (Ayres 2018; Hartley et al.
2018; Teasdale and Dey 2019). Leadership for public value is also involved in establishing
how decisions are made (Andrews 2018) and how to change practices and ways of working
(Brown and Head 2018). Leadership for public value can be based on command and control
or it can be based on participation and collaboration, or some hybrid, and it may entail
contestation and even conflict as much as collaboration, because there are different interests,
goals and aspirations among varied stakeholders.

Finally, this symposium does not assume that leadership is necessarily benign or that public
value is always created. Some leadership may negatively affect or deplete public value. Some
situations call for leadership, but different actors are impervious to mobilization attempts or
indeed may actively oppose such efforts. Leadership in these symposium articles often
involves a continual struggle over how public value might be created, enhanced and
subsequently sustained, in the context of other interests. Such impediments may be the
interests represented by traditional public administration (Brown and Head 2018); criminals
and potential vigilantes (Hartley et al. 2018); political and economic interests to build an
ideal model of citizenship and enterprise (Teasdale and Dey 2019); different views about how
to achieve congestion charging (Trivellato et al. 2018); how to manage big data in the public
interest and not solely private corporation capture (Andrews 2018) or degrees of support,
indifference or hostility to a social innovation (Ayres 2018). This highlights that contest and
conflict are often endemic, and sometimes even beneficial, to the exercise of public
leadership.

Thus, the symposium sheds a light on the informal politics (in the sense of addressing diverse
interests) and on the politics of public value creation as a contested democratic practice
(Benington, 2011). Some articles (Ayres 2018; Brown and Head 2018; Hartley et al. 2018)
illustrate that there can be multiple publics with diverse and competing values, interests and
expectations (Busoic and Lodge 2017). This brings to the fore the challenge of how to lead
for public value in situations where there are diverse interests and contested views, values
and aspirations.

8
4. Political Astuteness

We suggest, on the basis of this symposium and other literature, that actors are aided in their
public leadership roles to create public value by having certain capabilities which together are
conceptualised as political astuteness. Political astuteness enhances value creation through
improving the capability of actors to understand, manage, and coordinate various of the
interests at stake. Though political astuteness is only referred to explicitly in two of the
articles in this symposium, the importance of this concept is implied and illustrated in the
other articles, where authors sketch out some leadership qualities for public value creation.
There is, therefore, an argument to be made that political astuteness is an important missing
ingredient linking leadership and public value in many contexts.

Astuteness can be understood as being concerned with discernment, and is often associated
with being clever, keen, ingenious or shrewd. Being astute is “having or showing an ability to
accurately assess situations or people and turn this to one’s advantage” (Oxford English
Dictionary). So where does politics fit in? For a long while, politics was seen as either an
illegitimate or dysfunctional activity in both general management theory and in public
administration (Hartley et al. 2015; Alford et al. 2017). But that situation is rapidly changing,
with a greater recognition of the potentially constructive role of politics in management
(Buchanan 2008; Vigoda-Gadot and Drory 2017), including in public
management/administration (Baddeley and James, 1987; Hartley 2017). Leadership with
political astuteness (also known as political savvy, nous, having political antennae) has been
defined as “deploying political skills in situations involving diverse and sometimes
competing interests and stakeholders, in order to achieve sufficient alignment of interests
and/or consent in order to achieve outcomes” (Hartley et al. 2013, p. 24).

Politics has been a strand in organization and management theory from its early history
(March and Simon 1958). They argued that rationality in decision-making only takes place
under very constrained circumstances, and that most decisions contain a political angle.
However, these insights were confined to the background for an extended period as
Taylorism and its progeny gained dominance in management theory, such that politics was
seen to be the antithesis of technical, fair and rational management. The eschewing of politics
was seen as particularly necessary for public servants who additionally were expected to

9
avoid the domain of politics, in the famous ‘politics-administration dichotomy’ (Svara 2001),
with its mythic idea of a clear line between politicians and public servants.

The problem was that these attempts to push politics to the margins of the work of managers,
public or otherwise, were not successful, as is now recognised. Furthermore, politics and
political astuteness are being rediscovered as sometimes having a constructive role in and
between organizations. As theorists came to view organizations, partnerships and networks in
pluralist ways, with diverse and sometimes competing interests and goals, then social
processes (including leadership) had to grapple with that complexity (Vangen and Huxham
2011).

The increasingly polycentric nature of governance, in a shared-power world (Crosby and

Bryson 2005) also means that informal, not only formal, politics is woven through the texture
of governance, management and workplace relations. Jim Bulpitt’s (1983, 1986) statecraft
theory is particularly relevant here, whereby statecraft is a basic focus on the art of governing
and practical politics. More contemporary, decentred analysis of the nature of governance has
seen a revision of Bulpitt’s approach, as it identifies context-dependent regularities, in for
instance centre-periphery arrangements (Ayres et al. 2018) and the influence and scope of
‘creative’ agency in governance (James 2016).

Empirical research has found that managers use politics for constructive organizational and
social purposes (e.g. Buchanan 2008; Perrewé et al. 2007; Primomo and Björling 2013),
including creating and discerning public value (Hartley et al. 2015). Public managers often
have to cross the line so that the politics/administration dichotomy is not a line but a zone in
some contexts (Svara 2001; Alford et al. 2017). Public managers say they are more effective
in working with elected/appointed politicians when they are politically astute (e.g. Manzie
and Hartley 2013; Alford et al. 2017; Svara 2001; Primomo and Björling 2013).

These cognitive, affective and behavioural qualities go well beyond skill to include
judgement and knowledge, so the language of capabilities is more suitable, though skill is
sometimes a useful shorthand to describe capabilities. The capabilities include judgement
(Hartley 2017) and the work of Vickers (1995) is relevant here as is that of Rhodes (2015)
who discusses political nous as a form of judgement. The capabilities of political astuteness
are deployed in different ways in different contexts and with different interests to mobilise
and provide direction through leadership. So, what does this symposium add to our theorising
about political astuteness and what further research agenda is suggested by these articles?

10
Ayres (2018) and Hartley et al. (2018) are the two articles which draw explicitly on the
concept of political astuteness. They both utilise the model of political astuteness of Hartley
et al. (2015) with its five inter-linked dimensions of capability, from personal skills through
interpersonal skills, reading people and situations, building alignment and alliances, through
to strategic direction and scanning. They both analyse politically astute leadership in informal
political arenas by actors who are not formal politicians. In the Ayres case, this is by a social
enterprise and in the Hartley et al. case this is by a public service. In both cases, leadership is
exercised by a range of actors, movements and organizations, with divergent interests.
Recognising the constructive social and organizational purposes of political astuteness, Ayres
argues that soft or face-to-face metagoverning draws on political astuteness to help navigate
spaces where multiple interests are at play, within and across sectors. Particularly important,
in her case study, is the reading of people and situations, so that the activists group at the
centre of the case study are aware of their own interactions and the need to foster trust so that
they are not seen to be aligned too much – but neither aligned too little – with influential state
institutions.

Ayres (2018) introduces the idea of a tipping point between flexibility and democratic
legitimacy which she claims is only navigated through acute political astuteness. This
addresses a key issue at the heart of political astuteness – the extent to which political
astuteness reflects and works within proper organizational procedures and the extent to which
outcomes are achieved through flexible, but sometimes illegitimate (or perceived to be
illegitimate) means. The tipping point (see also James 2016) captures this, sometimes fine,
balancing act between legitimacy and illegitimacy; transparency and obscurity, even secrecy.

Hartley et al. (2018) draw on the five dimensional framework of political astuteness in
examining police leadership. The police had to take account of many and varied stakeholders,
some exercising their own leadership, such that leadership by the police could not solely
concern themselves with upholding the law and prosecuting law-breakers. It required not
only effective personal and interpersonal skills to build trust, demonstrate active listening and
linking action to discussion, but also careful reading of the people and the situations the
police and the rural communities had created and whether and when to co-produce with rural
communities. Without political astuteness, leadership of a complex and contested situation
could have moved to an informal group of disaffected rural residents, so the police acted with
integrity and political astuteness to re-assert influence and calm the situation down. This
involved building alignment and alliances, while keeping a sense of strategic direction. This

11
is not cosy collaboration, but rather involved some tough decisions about which stakeholders
to include and which to exclude. It involved thinking through the potential public value
outcomes so that other pressures on police time and resources did not overtake the needs of
the rural communities.

Interestingly, the other symposium articles do not explicitly address political astuteness but
their work implies such capabilities in some ways. For example, Brown and Head (2018), in
analysing the public value created or constrained in the enactment of new approaches to
engagement with aboriginal communities, note that coproducing public value involves
understanding the different actors, sectors and logics in the policy space and the conflict and
ambiguities this creates. Navigating such conflicts and ambiguities requires, they argue, new
approaches to training public managers so that they can engage effectively with such
challenges. What is this if not a call for programmes to develop political astuteness
capabilities, including as they do, ‘reading’ different interests? For Teasdale and Dey (2019),
civil society organization practitioners have to be politically astute to read the contexts and
situations and to deviate or mimic behaviours depending on the positions (intended here both
in terms of values and power) of government officials. Trivellato et al. (2018) discuss the role
of the orchestrator in complex and contested change. This type of leadership has to consider
stakeholder interests and be able to imagine and enact decisions which reflect and perhaps
balance different interests. Andrews (2018) examines the conflicting aspirations of state and
market in relation to big data and algorithms. There is a strong sense in this article of the
sometimes divergent and sometimes aligned interests of private firms, the state and citizens.
Andrews makes a clear argument for greater attention to be paid by state actors to analysing
these interests and then taking action to protect public value. Andrews did not make the
explicit case, but his analysis can be extended by implication to arguing for political
astuteness skills to read the contexts and the interests of each company, each organization and
each sector if public value is to be protected.

This symposium also sheds a light on the links between political astuteness and discourses
and narratives. Political astuteness may help leaders to position themselves in a debate or in
the framing of a problem or in the key leadership role of sense-making (Bennister et al. 2017;
’t Hart 2014). Political astuteness may be valuable, for example, to ascertain who is
monopolizing the debate and whether that is problematic (Andrews 2018); to ensure that the
language in policy documents is congruent with policy vision (Brown and Head 2018); to
ensure that actions, language and cultural symbols are congruent with service plans (Hartley

12
et al. 2018); to build support for an initiative through consistent messaging (Ayres 2018); and
to connect to an existing discourse (Teasdale and Dey 2019).

However, while political astuteness as a concept and as a framework of capabilities is

valuable in showing the links between leadership and public value, there is a danger that it is
used as a post hoc concept in case studies. It may be useful to explain actions, but can it be
used to predict? Do others beyond the case study authors recognise political astuteness? What
evidence is sufficient to frame leadership as being politically astute?

5. Conclusions
Our review and characterisation of the symposium articles initially focused on the twin
concepts of public leadership and public value, and their relationship. Public value theory
proved to be particularly useful to understand public management and public administration
in an era of complex and wicked societal challenges with multiple actors exercising
leadership in ways which was associated with public value creation and/or destruction. The
articles reveal many publics, many values and many interests. Part of the growing
development of the literature about public leadership is its recognition of plural rather than
singular interests in the exercise of leadership. Importantly the articles hone in on the value of
creative agents in their reading of context, driving change and seeking solutions across
divergent interests to societal problems. Similarly, while there may be some situations where
public value can be measured in a consensual way, in many situations that value to the public
and to the public sphere may be contested among and across stakeholder groups in society.

The articles singly and together shed light on the multiple actors and forms of public
leadership and on the politics of leadership for public value, both in terms of informal and
formal aspects of politics – the workplace or social arena as much as formal political systems.
Political astuteness, we argue, is the conceptual link to understand leadership capability for
public value.

In terms of research methodologies, examining societal challenges as units of analysis and

recognising the often subjective, affective and symbolic dimensions of public value as well as
the multi-actor nature of modern governance and management is valuable. This symposium
illustrates the contribution of interpretative approaches to public administration (e.g. Bevir
2011) and calls for transdisciplinary and more co-produced research between academics,

13
practitioners and other stakeholders (Richardson, Durose and Perry 2018; Benington and
Hartley 2004).

In terms of practice, while we have highlighted the conceptual link of political astuteness
between leadership and public value, this introduction does not address the ethical issues of
public value, leadership and political astuteness. Yet ethics is important to consider as
research attempts to uncover more about whether, when, how and why political astuteness
helps actors in public leadership roles to create public value.

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Table 1 – Key strands in public value theory

Key Moore Benington Bozeman Meynhardt

perspectives on
public value
theory
Illustrative 1995; 2013 2011; 2015 2007 2009
publications
Public Value The activities Public value as Public values Public value is
which add value, a contested in the plural valuing
created by public democratic (normative relationships
managers through practice consensus between a
public consisting of about key subject
organizations two values in (individual,
dimensions: society). group) and an
The strategic what the public unknowable
triangle as a tool to value and what social entity.
help managers adds value to
discern and create the public
public value sphere
Public Multiple Multiple An entity Individual
stakeholders publics broadly understanding
including citizens, equivalent to a of the collective
taxpayers and society (the common
users of services. good)
Value Outcomes which What is valued The range of Value is based
are seen as by the public values which on individual
valuable to society and what adds are held to be psychological
value to the important for a needs
public sphere functioning
society;
normative
values, based
on rights and
obligations in
society.

19