Public Value is Knowable, Public Value Creation is Not

Humility is key to public value, so is courage. For me, this is the message of Prebble’s stimulating article. It comes at a good time, when public value thinking is well-established, theorizing about it differentiates into more or less normative schools of thought and empirical research is on its way—normal science as one could say. I read Mark’s argument as a wake-up call to take public value thinking to a more process-oriented level and reflect about the chances and risks of any intervention in the name of public value. It is a characteristic of good theories to start and apply a development lens.