The Re-emergence of Values

Concern with values, standards and ethics in public life is not new. Values and ethics have a close but distinctive relationship in policy making. It is significant that many Whitehall-styled bureaucracies such as those of Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Britain have recently sought to review and restate public service values in the context of administrative reform and modernisation.

1. In several cases, the requirement for restating values has also come about as a consequence of revelations of political and administrative corruption.
2. Declining public trust in institutions of government internationally has also acted as a catalyst for re-establishing the primacy of public service values and as part of a `back- to - basics' approach to governing.
3. A renewed emphasis on values is also driven by the trend to develop `corporate culture' and the requisite concomitant need to clarify corporate values as a means to achieving corporate success, application of economic rationalism to the public service in an attempt to overcome its traditionally perceived failings, has also encouraged and engendered new value sets.

The first `wave' of structural reforms induced by the NPM movement ends, a new wave of cultural reforms is beginning, which emphasises the centrality of shared values (2007). These values are necessary to underpin reforms based on improving responsiveness  and efficiency and the extent to which new values replace rather than support existing values raises important questions in relation to performance and management.