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Beauty From Within: What Bureaucracies Stand for

The American Review of Public Administration

Published online on

Abstract

While much of our knowledge about public sector values is generated from surveys of public managers, this study explores the official core value statements of 75 U.S. government agencies. These values represent the characteristics with which the agencies want to be associated, rather than the values that guide the administrative behavior and decision making of public officials. A key finding in this study is that values that have been set as standards in many OECD countries, and reiterated in ethical guidelines for the U.S. federal government, are not among the most frequently stated on agency web sites. In light of these findings, the study discusses the role of public sector values in relation to agency identity and image.