Different strokes for different folks? The translation of public values into official meanings
| Published date | 01 March 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208523231155756 |
| Author | Arild Wæraas,Hogne Lerøy Sataøen |
| Date | 01 March 2024 |
Different strokes for
different folks? The
translation of public values
into official meanings
Arild Wæraas
Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway
Hogne Lerøy Sataøen
Örebro University, Sweden
Abstract
It is well known that the meanings of publicvalues can vary significantly across different
settings, given their abstract nature. Despite this knowledge, however, the public values
literature has not significantly examined the official meanings of public values in their
local setting. Against this backdrop, on the basis ofa translation perspective we examine
the context-specific meanings of 219 public values as defined by the core values state-
ments of 61 Nordic central government agencies. We show variation and patterns in the
meanings, emphasizing how the meanings vary depending on whether the values are
translated into (1) a work and service delivery theme, (2) an internal relations theme
and (3) an external relations theme. Through these findings, the study highlights the
importance of taking into consideration the official meanings of agencycore values
for understanding the relationship between public values and administrative behaviour.
Points for practitioners
The findings from this study inform public managers and administrators of the possible
variation in the official meanings that could be attributedto core values. They suggest
that public managers should carefully consider how they want their agency’s core values
to be understood by the employees. Specifically, when translating core values, public
managers are advised to assess whether the signifiers they use to translate the values
Corresponding author:
Arild Wæraas, Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo Business School, Postboks 4, St Olavs Plass, 0130 Oslo,
Norway.
Email: arildwae@oslomet.no
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
2024, Vol. 90(1) 3–19
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00208523231155756
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
should guide work and service delivery, internal relations or external relations, respect-
ively, or a combination. By drawing attention to the intended meanings of core values,
the findings create increased awareness of how different translations of core values
implicate different administrative behaviours.
Keywords
public values, core values statements, translation, governmentagencies, ethics, central
administration
Public values are ‘the ideals, articulated as principles, to be followed when producing a
public service or regulating citizens’behavior, thereby providing direction to the behav-
ior of public servants’(Beck Jørgensen & Sørensen, 2013, p. 72). The problem is,
however, that values are not good guidelines for action in themselves. Values generally
express ‘conceptions of the desirable’(Schwartz, 1999, p. 24), but their abstract and
ambiguous nature enables different, unstable interpretations of what is desirable and
ultimately different behaviours and practices.
To provide more clarity for civil servants, many public agencies develop formal state-
ments in which they translate each of their core values into more specific guidelines for
administrative behaviour (Nyström Höög & Björkvall, 2018). To translate, in this sense,
is to move a construct from the abstract to the context-specific (Czarniawska & Sevón,
1996). Values statements that display such translations can be found in strategic plans,
handbooks, annual reports and agency websites. Despite their visibility, however, little
is known about them. We therefore ask: what are official agency core values intended
to mean?
Our research question is motivated by calls for more research into the meanings of
public values (Martinsen & Beck Jørgensen, 2010; Veeneman, Dicke, & De Bruijne,
2009). These calls are warranted for several reasons. First, whereas multiple studies of
codes of conduct in public organisations (Grundstein-Amado, 2001; Svensson &
Wood, 2004; Thaler & Helmig, 2016) and national administrative codes of ethics
(Christensen & Lægreid, 2011; De Graaf & Van der Wal, 2008; Kernaghan, 2000,
2003) have been conducted, the literature on agency-specific core values statements con-
stitutes a very limited part of the public values literature. This is surprising given that core
values are meant to guide what civil servants should do in certain situations and how they
should do it (Nyström Höög & Björkvall, 2018). Thus, empirical data on how agencies
translate their core values into specific guidelines could enable us to better understand,
explain and predict administrative behaviour and decisions (Veeneman et al., 2009).
Second, a challenge to progress in the research on public sector values is that values
tend to be aggregated in large Nstudies and examined out of their empirical context,
thereby ‘robbing them of specific meaning’(Beck Jørgensen & Bozeman, 2007,
p. 358). If the specific meaning of values is unknown, researchers are forced to rely on
labels and the general meanings of the values rather than their local meanings, and on
the frequency of these labels as indicators for their importance. From this line of reason-
ing, core values are those values that are the most frequently mentioned (cf. Rutgers,
4International Review of Administrative Sciences 90(1)
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