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A new public administration movement is emerging to move beyond traditional public administration and New Public Management. The new movement is a response to the challenges of a networked, multisector, no‐one‐wholly‐in‐charge world and to the shortcomings of previous public administration approaches. In the new approach, values beyond efficiency and effectiveness—and especially democratic values—are prominent. Government has a special role to play as a guarantor of public values, but citizens as well as businesses and nonprofit organizations are also important as active public problem solvers. The article highlights value‐related issues in the new approach and presents an agenda for research and action to be pursued if the new approach is to fulfill its promise. Bryson, Crosby, and Bloomberg Podcast Episode

In this paper, the authors show that PLS path modeling can be used to assess a hierarchical construct model. They provide guidelines outlining four key steps to construct a hierarchical construct model using PLS path modeling. This approach is illustrated empirically using a reflective, fourth-order latent variable model of online experiential value in the context of online book and CD retailing. Moreover, the guidelines for the use of PLS path modeling to estimate parameters in a hierarchical construct model are extended beyond the scope of the empirical illustration. The findings of the empirical illustration are used to discuss the use of covariance-based SEM versus PLS path modeling. The authors conclude with the limitations of their study and suggestions for future research.

The elicitation of scientific and technical judgments from experts, in the form of subjective probability distributions, can be a valuable addition to other forms of evidence in support of public policy decision making. This paper explores when it is sensible to perform such elicitation and how that can best be done. A number of key issues are discussed, including topics on which there are, and are not, experts who have knowledge that provides a basis for making informed predictive judgments; the inadequacy of only using qualitative uncertainty language; the role of cognitive heuristics and of overconfidence; the choice of experts; the development, refinement, and iterative testing of elicitation protocols that are designed to help experts to consider systematically all relevant knowledge when they make their judgments; the treatment of uncertainty about model functional form; diversity of expert opinion; and when it does or does not make sense to combine judgments from different experts. Although it may be tempting to view expert elicitation as a low-cost, low-effort alternative to conducting serious research and analysis, it is neither. Rather, expert elicitation should build on and use the best available research and analysis and be undertaken only when, given those, the state of knowledge will remain insufficient to support timely informed assessment and decision making.

This article seeks to put the \"public\" back in public values research by theorizing about the potential of direct citizen participation to assist with identifying and understanding public values. Specifically, the article explores eight participatory design elements and offers nine propositions about how those elements are likely to affect the ability of administrators to identify and understand public values with regard to a policy conflict. The article concludes with a brief discussion about potential directions for future research.

Decisions always involve both facts and values, whereas most science communication focuses only on facts. If science communication is intended to inform decisions, it must be competent with regard to both facts and values. Public participation inevitably involves both facts and values. Research on public participation suggests that linking scientific analysis to public deliberation in an iterative process can help decision making deal effectively with both facts and values. Thus, linked analysis and deliberation can be an effective tool for science communication. However, challenges remain in conducting such process at the national and global scales, in enhancing trust, and in reconciling diverse values.

Urban growth requires the replacement of outdated buildings, yet growth may be restricted when landowners do not internalize positive spillover effects from their own reconstruction. The Boston Fire of 1872 created an opportunity for widespread simultaneous reconstruction, initiating a virtuous circle in which building upgrades encouraged further upgrades of nearby buildings. Land values increased substantially among burned plots and nearby unburned plots, capitalizing economic gains comparable to the prior value of burned buildings. Boston had grown rapidly prior to the Fire, but negative spillovers from outdated durable buildings had substantially constrained its growth by dampening reconstruction incentives.

We present two studies that together test a fundamental yet rarely examined assumption underlying the contemporary appeal of authenticity—namely, that consumers assign higher value ratings to organizations regarded as authentic. Study 1 conducts content analysis of unsolicited online restaurant reviews entered voluntarily by consumers in three major U.S. metropolitan areas from October 2004 to October 2011; the data contain information from 1,271,796 reviews written by 252,359 unique reviewers of 18,869 restaurants. The findings show that consumers assign higher ratings to restaurants regarded as authentic, even after controlling for restaurant quality in several ways. In addition, we find that consumers perceive independent, family-owned, and specialist (single-category) restaurants as more authentic than they do chain, non-family-owned, and generalist (multiple-category) restaurants. Study 2 reinforces these findings using an experimental design in which participants were presented with photos and minimal descriptions of fictitious restaurants and then asked to evaluate the likely authenticity, quality, and overall value of the restaurants in a predetermined sequence. Central to both studies is an authenticity scale that was developed through the use of an online survey that ascertains the specific language used by individuals in referencing authenticity in the restaurant domain. Taken together, these studies demonstrate that authenticity generates higher consumer value ratings of organizations; the studies also identify certain types of organizations that are more likely to receive authenticity attributions by consumers.

In macromolecular x-ray crystallography, refinement R values measure the agreement between observed and calculated data. Analogously, R merge values reporting on the agreement between multiple measurements of a given reflection are used to assess data quality. Here, we show that despite their widespread use, R merge values are poorly suited for determining the high-resolution limit and that current standard protocols discard much useful data. We introduce a statistic that estimates the correlation of an observed data set with the underlying (not measurable) true signal; this quantity, CC*, provides a single statistically valid guide for deciding which data are useful. CC* also can be used to assess model and data quality on the same scale, and this reveals when data quality is limiting model improvement.

Marketing departments are under increased pressure to demonstrate their economic value to the firm. This challenge is exacerbated by the fact that marketing uses attitudinal (e.g., brand awareness), behavioral (e.g., brand loyalty), and financial (e.g., sales revenue) performance metrics, which do not correlate highly with each other. Thus, one metric could view marketing initiatives as successful, whereas another could interpret them as a waste of resources. The resulting ambiguity has several consequences for marketing practice. Among these are that the scope and objectives of marketing differ widely across organizations. There is confusion about the difference between marketing effectiveness and efficiency. Hard and soft metrics and offline and online metrics are typically not integrated. The two dominant tools for marketing impact assessment, response models and experiments, are rarely combined. Risk in marketing planning and execution receives little consideration, and analytic insights are not communicated effectively to drive decisions. The authors first examine how these factors affect both research and practice. They then discuss how the use of marketing analytics can improve marketing decision making at different levels of the organization. The authors identify gaps in marketing's knowledge base that set the stage for further research and enhanced practice in demonstrating marketing's value.

More than 41 000 water bodies are listed as impaired by the US Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Water Act. Implementation and enforcement of regulations designed to address these impairments can be costly, raising questions about the value of the public benefits derived from improved surface water quality. Here, we assess the recreational value of changes in water quality using freely available geotagged photographs, taken by members of the public, as a proxy for recreational visits to lakes. We found that improved water clarity is associated with increased numbers of visits to lakes and that lake users were willing to incur greater costs to visit clearer lakes. Lake users were willing to travel 56 minutes farther (equivalent to US$22 in travel costs) for every one-meter increase in water clarity in Minnesota and Iowa lakes, when controlling for other lake attributes. Our approach demonstrates the potential for social-media data to inform social-ecological research, including assessment of the recreational benefits of improvements in water quality.