Social value in public enterprises from the perspective of Creating Shared Value (CSV): The case of the Korea Expressway Corporation
| Author | Yongwon Kim,Hyeon-joung Kim |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208523211029765 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Social value in public
enterprises from the
perspective of Creating
Shared Value (CSV): The
case of the Korea
Expressway Corporation
Yongwon Kim
Korea Expressway Corporation Research Institute, South
Korea
Hyeon-joung Kim
Korea Expressway Corporation Research Institute, South
Korea
Abstract
Numerous scholars have noted social issues such as inequality and insufficient social cap-
ital as limitations of efficiency-oriented neoliberal development strategies. In this con-
text, the Moon Jae-in administration in South Korea declared social value as the core
value of the state. Therefore, public institutions are required to prioritize social value.
Beyond ideological discussions, these social and policy changes suggest the need for con-
crete discussions on how to practically realize social value. Public institutions have
strengthened their social responsibility, contributing to local communities and low-
income groups. However, companies often consider social responsibility a cost, which
impedes growth. As public enterprises, a type of public institution, have the character-
istics of a company, their inherent goals of profitability or entrepreneurship may be lim-
ited by enhancing publicness to realize social value. Therefore, public enterprises face
the challenge of realizing social value in a way that benefits both society and business.
To devise measures to realize social value by strengthening publicness while ensuring
profitability, this study focuses on Creating Shared Value (CSV), which benefits both
Corresponding author:
Hyeon-joung Kim, Korea Expressway Corporation Research Institute, 24 Dongtansunhwan-daero 17 gil,
Hwaseong-si, Gyeonggi-do 18489, South Korea.
Email: heymole@gmail.com
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
2022, Vol. 88(4) 1211–1227
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00208523211029765
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
companies and society. Publicness and profitability, two values that public enterprises
pursue, are discussed, and Corporate Social Responsiblilty (CSR) is compared with
the CSV perspective, which aims to benefit both. This study devises measures from
the CSV perspective for realizing social value in the Korea Expressway Corporation, a
public enterprise. Implications for other public enterprises are highlighted.
Points for practitioners
As the need for public institutions to solve social issues has increased, public enterprises
face the challenge of realizing social value while ensuring profitability. In this context, this
study took the CSV approach and conducted a case study on the Korea Expressway
Corporation to present plans for public enterprises to create social value by fulfilling
their purpose. By suggesting a process and detailed projects from the CSV perspective,
this study will help practitioners to create social value tailored to the characteristics of
each public enterprise.
Keywords
creating shared value, entrepreneurship, profitability, public enterprise, publicness,
social value
Introduction
Facing social issues such as the extreme imbalance of wealth and a deteriorating sense of
community, the Moon Jae-in administration, which began in 2017, declared improving
social value to be the core of their national agenda. Accordingly, the administration
began to emphasize the realization of social value as the ultimate goal of public institu-
tions with publicness. Emphasis on strengthening public institutions’publicness
increased based on the criticism that New Public Management (NPM), a public manage-
ment ideology rooted in neoliberalism, overemphasizes efficiency. Over the past few
decades, NPM, which originated from Western countries, has spread globally as one
of the most popular and dominant models of administrative reform. The NPM reform
movement effected a paradigmatic change in the conceptualization of the government’s
role and how it should be performed (Kim and Han, 2015).
As NPM theory is based on two theoretical foundations of managerialism and new
institutional economics (Hood, 1991; Rhodes, 1997), the key to NPM-inspired reform
is to establish an incentive system that applies the principle of competition and liberates
bureaucrats from bureaucratic control under the system, thereby enabling them to work
freely as public entrepreneurs. However, even the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD), a long-time defender of NPM, argued that it
is a “reform that generated unexpected negative consequences,”and that it is “an
outcome from failing to understand that management in the public sector not only deli-
vers and provides public services but also possesses and realizes the value of
1212 International Review of Administrative Sciences 88(4)
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