Public values on the public/private boundary: the case of civil servant recruitment examinations in China

Abstract

This article looks at public values as an alternative public management instrument to the traditional public instruments or those of New Public Management (NPM). China offers very explicit examples of public values deliberately built on the boundary between the public and the private. We examine this issue through the civil servant recruitment examinations in China and the point of view of the candidates. We propose a cultural approach to the ‘publicness’ of these examinations to understand the public/private articulation of the values they convey and their roles in the field of public management in China. We highlight a set of spiritual and moral values from the private sphere that are transmitted in the public values through the civil servant recruitment examinations, often to legitimize the government and its social control. Points for practitioners In this article we consider public management instruments in China that are often relatively unknown or considered archaic. Their uses offer original examples of instruments that are embedded in Chinese society that open out the spectrum of public values towards private values, mainly spiritual and moral. We wish to make an empirical contribution to the debate on the role of public values in public management. We investigate the civil servant recruitment examinations in China through their content and the values they transmit. Candidates for the examinations explain to us the values that guide their preparation for public jobs and we analyse their role in Chinese public management.