How to create public value through integrated cultural systems?

The topic of performance measurement (Bovaird, 2003; Holzer and Yang, 2004; Borgonovi, 2008; Bianchi, Williams, 2013) of public value (Benington, 2009: 5,6; Benington and Moore, 2011) for the welfare of citizens is not merely, today, a subject of interest amongst academics of public management. More increasingly, it has become a heated matter for public managers and their organizations’ practitioners since they are daily confronted with problem of delivering efficiently and effectively public actions, policies, goods and services under the rubric of the 21st century’s paradigm in the Public Management literature, that is Community Governance (Manfredi, 2009, 2013). This perspective, which unfolds through a series of networks and relationships has sparked off the development of innovative public and private models aimed at integrating all community’s views and interests in a systemic view. Community Governance, therefore, entails a method of governing that pursues, as its primarily aim, sustainable development for communities and territories, and it is supported by coherent processes of community planning and programming by adopting a multidisciplinary, strategic and systemic approach (Totikidis, 2005). This paper focuses on the topic of Public Value (PV) in the realm of Community Governance and in Integrated Cultural Systems in particular, with the aim to fill the gap in the literature of Public Management and Governance and to provide practitioners with good tools for measuring Public Value. It is argued, infact, that there is a major opportunity for governments to achieve effective and efficient results in improving their communities by allowing citizens to use performance measurement (Bovaird 2003, Holzer and Yang, 2004; Borgonovi 2008; Bianchi, Wiliams, 2013) to generate actions towards better public services (Bianchi, 2009, 2012, 2014; Bianchi, Rivenbark, 2014). In other words, the model of Community Governance, observes the linkages between citizens, governments and measuring performance as configured in a triangle (Foley, Martin, 2000). The literature will also cover the issue of the territorial dimension named the Metropolitan Area (Bryson J.M. 2011) that, by its natural and original configuration as a public policy, is “per se” conceived as a form of public value that is generated or destroyed (Esposito, Ricci, 2015). Within the territorial configuration of Metropolitan Areas, policies towards the creation of integrated systems, such as culture systems in this circumstance, will be also explored in order to understand how can create public value through Integrated Cultural Systems and if Performance Measurement represents a tool that is useful to visualize tangible and intangible Public Values or if it is, rather, a “myth” as argued by some authoritative scholars (Modell, 2004).