In this article we reexamine the public value creation (PVC) framework by exploring the role of value creation at the frontline of public service. In current literature, public value creation is seen to be exclusively reserved for public managers, and not for professionals working on the shop floor. We explain how this is an incomplete portrayal of street-level reality. Theoretically, we find that merging the body of literature on PVC with that on public values perspective provides useful insights. We then test our new frontline framework empirically. Focusing on the role of value creation in care, we provide an in-depth qualitative analysis of interviews with three different groups of health care professionals operating at the street-level: intensive care personnel, nurses from regular hospital care, and home care specialists (N=24). We argue that public professionals are actively and explicitly in charge of creating public value, through their everyday actions and decision making, in which they embed and enact public values. Our data shows the micro-creation of public value is immanent to what frontline workers do and functions as an important driver of work performance and work happiness. We also identify some risks organizational facilitation may pose to public value creation by frontline professionals. We show frontline value crafting may be hampered by organizational capacity and legitimacy issues in terms of low financial compensation, staff shortages, lack of managerial support and appreciation, and negative stereotyping of the profession. The contribution of our work is that it shifts attention to the processes and mechanisms of individual public value creation at the frontline, an underexplored level in public value creation literature.

Partly as a result of administrative failures and integrity violations, there are concerns about citizens' trust in politics. Reliable and self-critical political-administrative institutions are needed to reverse this. This calls for politicians and administrators with integrity, for people who, in addition to political, technical, legal and financial considerations, also pay explicit attention to moral considerations. Resilient and just governance, in other words, requires moral craftsmanship: an ethical execution of political-administrative duties and a continuous development of knowledge, skills, values, norms, and practices necessary for good governance.

Research on political-administrative integrity has, however, not paid much attention to moral craftsmanship. Until now, more attention has focused on the negative, on integrity violations, and on the failure of integrity systems and integrity policies. Research on the preconditions for integrity governance is scarce, especially research that looks at the connection between political-administrative systems, structures, cultures and individual behavior. Moreover, much of what we know is about civil servants, while the integrity of politicians and administrators has been under-researched. The moral craftsmanship of members of parliament and city council members, mayors, chairs, and aldermen, gets the short end of the stick. While it is precisely they who frequently have to deal with threats, intimidation, undermining crime and polarization. And so a resilient political integrity system is needed, in which structures, systems and cultures encourage and promote moral craftsmanship and in which political office holders have practical tools and skills to do the right thing.

We will present a draft proposal for a large, inter- en transdisciplinary research project to be submitted to the NWA-ORC scheme in The Netherlands in October 2024. The project combines insights from administrative science, ethics, political science, social and organizational psychology and constitutional and administrative law to investigate (1) how (different combinations of) cultural, structural and systemic features of local government ('local integrity systems') influence the moral craftsmanship of council members, aldermen and mayors and (2) how such craftsmanship in turn affects and is affected by trust of citizens in politicians and political institutions. The overall aim of the project is to provide better insight into the contextual meaning and interpretation of (local) moral craftsmanship and shows what does and does not work for the integrity of government and, ultimately, the trust and legitimacy of government. The project is set to result in an empirically validated, freely available evaluation framework that can give (international comparative) research in this area a strong impulse. It also provides a self-assessment tool that helps governments independently and periodically evaluate and strengthen their political-administrative integrity system. In addition, we develop materials that can be used in education and training to strengthen political-administrative moral craftsmanship.

In recent years, scholars have shown increased interest into administrative craftmanship (Rhodes, 2016; t’ Hart, 2014; Van Dorp, 2022; Van Dorp & ‘t Hart, 2019). Normative as well as empirical contributions assess which competencies, values and motives (should) make up this craftmanship. A key issue underpinning this debate is whether public servants are sufficiently equipped to deal with the complexities and challenges of 21st-century public administration (Raadschelders et al., 2007; Van der Wal, 2017), and whether traditional or new crafts and competencies should be emphasized in training and development, and administrative behaviour (Kerkhoff & Moschopoulos 2023; Needham and Mangan, 2016; Rhodes 2016).

As debates about administrative craftmanship are broad and diverse, it often remains unclear what the concept actually entails. This is largely due to the inherently contextual and subjective nature of the concept. In addition, most work on the topic is normative rather than empirical, and studies predominantly focus on public managers; the upper echelons of the bureaucracy (e.g., Van Dorp, 2022; Van der Wal, 2017). These gaps in the literature necessitate a clearer empirical measurement of how different types of public servants define, appreciate, and experience craftmanship.

In this paper, we present the results of a large-scale survey among 3700 Dutch public servants, employed at eleven ministries and three large executive agencies. The representative sample covers a wide range of types and positions across the four domains of the Dutch national civil service: policy, implementation, inspection and business operations.

First, the paper offers conceptual clarity by critically synthesizing the state of the art in the literature. Specifically, it outlines the extent to which various competencies (such as being able ‘to collaborate in networks’) and values (such as ‘transparency’) are deemed appropriate and important for public servant craftmanship. The paper also discusses to what extent various external and internal factors and developments (such as ‘technological innovation’ or ‘cutbacks’) add perceived pressure to respondents’ craftmanship.

Finally, we discuss the perceived role of internal management, for example by looking at whether management finds the topic important, whether enough space is offered to employees to develop themselves or whether public servants feel they can freely express their opinions.

Apart from offering new questions, our study also produces practical recommendations on how such large public organizations, across the various scales, functions and domains, should enable and develop future proof administrative craftmanship.