Hester Paanakker

education or, in this study, detention). Such qualities may pertain to the qualities of individuals in the realization of public craftsmanship (for instance, treating detainees with respect), or to qualities of the governance process by means of which public craftsmanship can prosper (for instance, providing a safe work environment for employees in penal facilities). Of necessity, a value contains a normative disposition, and obtains meaning from its observer: ‘a value can be any concept that expresses a positive or negative qualitative (or evaluative) statement and has a ‘motivating force’, that is, it gives direction to people’s thoughts and actions’ (Rutgers, 2015, p. 5). Similarly, Van der Wal states that ‘their meaning is derived not from the essence of the concept but from its usage […]: a meaning that constantly changes and differs from context to context’ (Van der Wal, 2008, p. 21). Rather than treating values as abstract entities, ‘we must remember that values first attain their actual significance in the concrete situation’ (L. B. Andersen et al., 2012, p. 725). In her work on cross-cultural value interpretation, Yang adds that ‘[t]he study of values therefore largely relies on how people interpret the values, which includes the meaning of a value and how its importance differs from person to person, from case to case, or/and from culture to culture’ (2016, p. 75). While scholars are warned to be aware of and to make explicit (the criteria of) their interpretations of values (Rutgers, 2008), the interpretations of the professionals that have to deal with values in daily decision making seems less prominently emphasized in empirical work. In measuring public values, many empirical studies start from a predetermined set of values, and more importantly, a predefined set of values, specifying to respondents how the values in question are understood by giving them a brief description of each value (cf. Reynaers, 2014a; Van der Wal, 2008; Van der Wal & Yang, 2015). Although such pre-determined definitions are very useful for demarcation purposes in research and to produce reliable and face valid results, we argue that content validity may actually be at stake. Predetermination of values may distort the portrayal of reality since public officials may understand and explain such values very differently, or perceive them differently in different settings, contexts, situations, or periods of time (cf. Haque, 2011; Rutgers, 2015; Witesman & Walters, 2015; Yang, 2016). Potentially, then, research might offer an exaggerated and misleading image of value convergence. We aim to complement existing foci on value rankings and value preferences among public officials by giving an in-depth account of how public professionals themselves express values. We deconstruct abstract notions of ‘good governance’ and broad public values into more tangible, context-dependent, concrete descriptions of how values are embodied by professionals and how they matter most in the job at hand. In line with Steenhuisen’s work (2009), this study harnesses 38 Chapter 2