Hester Paanakker

CHAPTER 2 PROFESSIONALISM AND PUBLIC CRAFTSMANSHIP AT STREET LEVEL Abstract Rather than the overall quality of governance, this chapter explores quality in public professions by looking at public craftsmanship. What does it mean to be a ‘good’ public administrator according to professionals themselves? What value orientations do public professionals have towards public craftsmanship and how convergent are these? In-depth qualitative research among Dutch prison professionals ( N =18) indicates that the specific work context is paramount in identifying and prioritizing a compact set of professional values. However, understandings of how to translate these values into good craftsmanship show only marginal commonality in practice, with professionals making their own personal compilations of ideal qualities. The results call for a focus on apprehending the meaning of values in specific professional work contexts, and to move from the study of broad, predefined and prearranged value sets to concrete articulations of values and the disparate nature of their actual application. 2.1 Quality of Governance at Street Level: Introducing Public Craftsmanship Based on the profession of prison officers, this chapter will provide insight into interpretations of public craftsmanship at street level. As such it will situate the public values debate in street level discourse. It will scrutinize the role of public values in frontline public service delivery and, specifically, will examine professional divergence in values of craftsmanship . Craftsmanship is understood to represent ‘the desire to do a job well for its own sake’ and brings together the skill and commitment needed to do such good work, with continuous judgment and questioning of the abilities required, in an overriding motivation for quality-driven work (Sennett, 2008, pp. 9, 285). Numerous studies examine when governance is ‘good’ at macro or meso level, commonly highlighting one or more core values of governance, without zooming in on what it means to be a ‘good’ performing professional at micro-level. Some studies set out to determine the overall levels of impartiality (Holmberg, Rothstein, & Nasiritousi, 2009; Rothstein & Teorell, 2008), integrity (M. Evans, 2012) or effectiveness pertaining to a minimum set of delivered public services (Woods, 2000). Others fully acknowledge the pluralistic character of 35