Hester Paanakker

37 less— shared value understanding than one would typically expect from the rather one- dimensional use of value labels in overarching policy frameworks and scientific studies. The remainder of the chapter follows the structure of these three questions of value interpretation, prioritization and convergence. In the next paragraphs, we address them theoretically, explain the methodology of research and analysis and then report the empirical findings on each aspect. The central research question that we answer is: what value orientations do public professionals have towards public craftsmanship and how convergent are these orientations? 2.2 A Bottom-Up Approach to Sense-Making by Public Professionals Rather than simplifying things, adding the public dimension to the values concept further complicates a clean line of theory and research (Van der Wal & Van Hout, 2009). Values are usually abstract constructs, often considered hard to grasp or measure, but so are the confines of what public is (Beck Jørgensen & Bozeman, 2007; Beck Jørgensen & Rutgers, 2015). According to Rutgers (2008, 2015) studies on public values tend to have a built-in ambiguity because they often omit to clearly, let alone unambiguously, define what they understand public values to be, and are consequently about very different phenomena. We argue that, at the other extreme, those that explicitly attach clear-cut definitions to the individual values they use, methodologically harnessing a fixed interpretation of, for instance, loyalty or effectiveness, may also suffer from ambiguity issues, albeit of a different nature. Researchers might overlook the meaning their research subjects attach to values, whether in their personal view or in their work context. In this chapter, we approach values from the perspective of professions, regarding public professionals as frontline or street level workers with a shared occupation and expertise (cf. Lipsky, 1980; Tummers et al., 2015). For the purpose of this study, we understand values as ‘qualities that are appreciated for contributing to or constituting what is good, right, beautiful or worthy of praise and admiration’, which as such are ‘manifested through behavior and action’ (De Graaf, 2003, p. 22). Public values, then, refer to values that directly relate to desired public sector conduct, processes and outcomes, or in Bozeman’s words, to ‘the principles on which governments and policies should be based’ (2007, p. 13) and that are supposed to guide public decision making in all its aspects 1 . In the narrower context of public craftsmanship, we understand values as the key qualities that public professionals value in the context of, and towards, the object of their work (for example 1 See the work of Beck Jørgensen & Bozeman 2007 for an elaborate account of the aspects to which the “public” in public values can refer 37 Craftsmanship at Street Level