Hester Paanakker

Contrary to the expectations, value divergence causes relatively few prison officers to experience moral dilemmas. Less than one-third of prison officers explain that value divergence seriously hampers their proper enactment of (the values of) their craft. The remaining majority of prison officers employ distinct coping strategies to circumvent or mitigate the negative impact of value divergence: some through their bureaucratic flexibility in a combination of loyalty and optimal utilization of their discretionary decision-making power, others by ignoring the existence of the value divergence altogether through mechanisms of cognitive distancing and indifference. Implications for Research and Practice This study into value convergence and divergence in relation to street-level craftsmanship in the prison sector generates the following overall conclusions. The value divergence found between instrumental managerial values on the one hand, and intrinsic public service values of professionals on the other: (1) mainly establishes in value prioritization and value realization in practice, and much less in value identification and value understanding (i.e. convergence in ideals, divergence in practical enactment); (2) is even more strongly manifested in the mutual stereotypical perceptions that groups have of each other than in the actual value approaches they pursue or would like to pursue, and; (3) leads to number of implementation problems in street-level practice and in frontline behaviors and attitudes, but does not necessarily lead street-level professionals to experience moral dilemmas. With these findings the thesis contributes to the academic field of public values by providing insight into the complexity of public value divergence. It illustrates how value divergence can manifest itself at different organizational levels and in different dimensions that are not necessarily aligned, and that agreement on ideals (as it is often measured in public values research) can be something very different than consensus on or conformity in practical implementation. Obtaining knowledge on the public values that public officials deem important thus tells only part of the story. It has proven to be of key importance to take into account the enactment of values (in addition to the identification and interpretation of values), but also to take into account the mutual perceptions that employees have of each other. Desirable or not: 203 Summary in English