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The Cloud of Unknowing: The Theory and Practice of Public Value in Times of Extremity

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Challenges to Public Value Creation

Part of the book series: Public Sector Organizations ((PSO))

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Abstract

This chapter explores the theory and practice of public value in an epoch of global “polycrisis” (Swilling, The age of sustainability: Just transitions in a complex world. Routledge, 2020), which poses profound questions for the future of the human species and the planet. This includes a simultaneous combination of climate emergency; profound geo-political shifts; seismic political economic, social, and cultural restructuring; and a surge of technological change involving machine-driven big data and artificial intelligence (AI). These multiple long-term transitions and over-lapping layers of existential uncertainties make discerning, creating, and sustaining public value deeply challenging. This chapter both analyzes this complex, contested, and volatile context, and discusses a range of philosophical, political, and practical ways of understanding how to re-create public value in these times of extremity.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

    John Benington

  2. The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

    Jean Hartley

Authors
  1. John Benington
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  2. Jean Hartley
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Correspondence to John Benington .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Public Administration and Policy, Virginia Tech, Arlington, VA, USA

    Brian J. Cook

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Benington, J., Hartley, J. (2024). The Cloud of Unknowing: The Theory and Practice of Public Value in Times of Extremity. In: Cook, B.J. (eds) Challenges to Public Value Creation. Public Sector Organizations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46030-2_4

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