After Reform: Accommodating Old Values and Assimilating New Ones

Public administration is characterised by a multiplicity of incompatible values. In the 1990s, reformers avoided confronting the inevitable tradeoffs among these values by focusing almost exclusively on the cost‐effective achievement of results. However, older values have a tendency to ‘bite back’ and new ones emerge. In the near term future, public administration will have to deal with at least three sets of values: 1) those that are non‐mission based, and consequently not directly related to achieving results; 2) those that go unprotected when government work is outsourced to private entities; and 3) those associated with globalisation.