Conceptualizing public value destruction

The research aims to map the different types, configurations and 'constellations' within the Italian galaxy (De Graaf, Nabatchi, Van Der Wal, 2012) or universe (Jorgensen, Bozeman, 2007: 359; Johnson, 2012) of public (dis) value, trying to develop a conceptual model based on the notion of public value (PV) and on the processes that allow its generation and 'visualization' (Guthrie, Farnsworth, 2008). PV is a variously definable abstract quantity, and not a measure quantity such as income (Onida, 1968: 558), which is used in its various stages of creation, transformation and destruction to help define public governance features (Sostero, 2003) when assessing the sustainability of public policies (Moore, 1995, 2002; Stoker, 2003; Benington, Moore, 2011; Guthrie, et al., 2014).The capital that generates or compromises PV is not abstract, though: it is the political capital, a specific component or sub-configuration of social capital that is behind political action (Birney, 2010) and can be seen as a complex and ever-changing combination of cultural paradigms, ideologies, skills, relations and ligatures (Dahrendorf, 1994: 42.193).Not much attention has been devoted in literature, particularly by Italian business science, to public (dis) value issues (abstaining from voting, corruption, tax evasion, (ab) use of power, (ab) use of law, State capture), to the difficulties in composing the frictions and tensions existing between apparatuses and people, between buro-cracies and demo-cracies (Aucoin, 1991, 2012; Blaug, 2006) and to the increasing risk of silent autarkic, anarchist, revolutionary tendencies or worse, all potentially subversive of democratic representation.Further goals of the present work are:i) to draw logical and conceptual cognitive maps able to identify and codify the distinctive elements that mark most situations of public (dis) value (Rutgers, 2008; Nabatchi, 2011), visualizing changes in value (either increasing or decreasing), evaluations and (re) evaluations (Masini, 1955). Such mapping process would also highlight hidden reserves resulting from the re-evaluation through co-generation and/or re-generation of new public value within an initially compromised context/situation (Borgonovi 2007: 606), for example by 'freeing' and converting properties confiscated from the Mafia in public goods available to the community (Plus-Value);ii) to verify the nature of any relationship existing between the degree of accountability that a public administration can implement and consolidate (Anessi Pessini, Borgonovi, 2000; Ricci, 2005, 2010; Lapsley, Ezzamel, Hyndman, Johensen, 2009; Parker, Guthrie, 2010; Anessi Pessina, Nasi, Steccolini, 2010), and the increasingly frequent depletion phenomena occurring within the Public Administration with relation to value (either tangible or intangible), finance, property and reputation (Birney, 2010: 4,5);iii) to analyze through a case study an example of the pathological situations compromising public value and integrity that increasingly often occur in the management of public bodies (Bianchi, 2012), and showing how the pursuit of individual happiness is detrimental to the degree of happiness referable to the community as a whole.