Hester Paanakker

29 and argues that the actual meaning of good or ethical governance is context dependent–as are its constitutive values. The chapter was co-authored with Dr. Anne-Marie Reynaers, and has been previously published as an article in a special issue on “A Legacy of Integrity: A Tribute to Leo Huberts” in Public Integrity . Findings show that values do not work along the lines of the systematic frameworks public administration scholars come up with. They work along the lines of personal interpretative repertoires, and, on an aggregate level, along the lines of the confined and decisive professional logics of bounded policy domains. Based on a wider exploration of how the findings of the thesis fit with insights from related studies and thoughts on public values, this conclusion that there is a need to factor in value contextuality and to examine values in concrete and specific public work contexts is a further substantiation of one of the key arguments of this thesis. Chapter 6. Public Values in the Frontline. The Effect of Value Divergence in a Dutch Prison Case. The last research question about value divergence effects is addressed in the final empirical chapter of this thesis: Chapter 6. It explains that there is a paucity of knowledge of how value differences or conflicts between the different public sector levels of policy, organization, and implementation affect public service delivery. This is an addition to scholarly work on the nature of the complexity and diversity of public values in public service delivery at the frontline, including how street-level officials deal with conflicting values in their work. In line with the previous chapters, but based on a different subset of the data, Chapter 6 finds considerable value convergence in value identification and understanding, but large (perceived and real) divergence in value prioritization or enactment in practice. Value divergence between policy managers, organizational management, and frontline workers ( N =55) juxtaposes the numerical focus of instrumental values (effectiveness and efficiency) with the public service focus of intrinsic values (humanity, task effectiveness, security, and reintegration). Value divergence is shown to increase implementation problems for intrinsic values, leading to sub-optimal value realization in public service delivery. Value divergence is perceived to be problematic, but, contrary to our expectations, does not necessarily cause street-level workers to experience moral dilemmas. The chapter puts forward two unique coping strategies that explain how street- level workers deal with and mitigate value divergence: they were found to use coping strategies of cognitive distancing (indifference) to ignore their superior’s values, or of bureaucratic flexibility that, from a deep-seated sense of loyalty, enables them to circumvent the most undesirable effects of value divergence. This chapter was co-authored by prof.dr . Gjalt de Graaf 29 Introduction