Overcoming the tensions between values: a challenge for French public service managers and their training schools
| Published date | 01 September 2017 |
| Author | Christian Chauvigné,Fabrice Larat |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852315594478 |
| Date | 01 September 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
International Review of
Administrative Sciences
2017, Vol. 83(3) 463–480
!The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0020852315594478
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International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
Article
Overcoming the tensions between
values: a challenge for French
public service managers and their
training schools
Fabrice Larat
National School of Administration – CERA, France
Christian Chauvigne
´
Centre for Research in Psychology, Cognition and
Communication, France
Abstract
While there is universal recognition of their important role in the functioning of admin-
istrations and for the motivation of public officials, the values that serve as a reference
for the public service are witnessing a change in the way they are understood and
implemented in practice, particularly with regard to the new requirements of public
management. The analysis developed in this article centres on the interplay between
various dimensions relating to the perception and use of the key values of the French
civil service and highlights the tensions that prevail despite the apparent preservation of
the axiological reference universe of those concerned. It raises the question of the role
of schools in the training of values management. It draws on the results of a survey
conducted in France by the network of civil service schools (Re
´seau des e
´coles de
service public; RESP) among managers undergoing training and their teachers and super-
visory staff.
Points for practitioners
The study shows that organizations that are responsible for the initial or continuing
training of civil servants offer a breeding ground for the (re)production of public service
values. However,for civil ser vice managers to be able to deal with the potential tensions
between values (no clear hierarchy, apparent contradictions) it is necessary to develop
their capacities for reflective analysis and practical application that will allow a critical
distance and promote a contextualized ethical approach.
Corresponding author:
Fabrice Larat, National School of Administration – CERA, 1, rue sainte marguerite, F-67080 Strasbourg,
France.
Email: Fabrice.LARAT@ena.fr
Keywords
civil service, ethics, public administration, public sector reform
Introduction
More than a decade ago, the OECD proposed a redefinition of values, noting that
industrialized countries had put renewed emphasis on traditional values, while
giving them a modern content and adding new values related to increasingly
results-driven demands. Ethics in the public service was presented in this report
as ‘necessary for public confidence’ and as ‘the keystone of good governance’
(OECD, 2000). Studies published over the following years in Canada (Bernier,
2002) noted that developments and restructuring under way in the public sector
are creating a context where there is a risk of the neglect of ethics. Numerous
studies, mainly in North America, thus put forward the changes allegedly brought
about in the public sector and its values by the tools and methods introduced by
New Public Management because of their rationality, and, in particular, the diffi-
culties of reconciling public values and market values (Bozeman, 2007). However, it
remains very difficult to identify which of existing values serve as the reference for
the public service and its officials in order to gauge the possible challenges to these
references that supposedly affect them. The survey conducted by the OECD into
key public service values shows that none of them has been universally accepted
and that only three values are referenced by more than half the states: impartiality,
legality and integrity (OECD, 2000). Moreover, only limited knowledge is available
to us about how these values enter into conflict with others and the impact of these
conflicts on practices or people who hold these values and must manage their
divergence.
In view of the above, it is useful to understand how public officials view public
service values in this new context, especially when it comes to the variations
between those they are supposed to apply in their activity, those they actually
apply and those they are struggling to apply. In a country such as France,
values indeed occupy a central place in the debate on administrative reform. The
question of the image public officials have of the different values at stake is there-
fore of particular importance.
Given the specific features of its administrative system as regards the recruitment
and socialization of its officials, a study of the changes affecting public service
values in France and the issues related to it cannot ignore the role played by the
public administration training institutions in the transmission of values and how
any discrepancies must be managed when it comes to putting them into practice.
This article aims to shed light on this reality. It is based on the results of a survey
conducted in France in the spring of 2011 by the network bringing together the
various public service schools (RESP). After describing in the first part the general
framework governing the public ethos and the transformations it faces, we will
analyse the perception of the role of public service values in France, as it transpires
464 International Review of Administrative Sciences 83(3)
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