Value citizenship and public service above entrepre- neurship. The public interest is better advanced by pub- lic servants and citizens committed to making mean- ingful contributions to society rather than by entrepreneurial managers acting as if public money were their own. The New Public Management encourages public admin- istrators to act and think as entrepreneurs of a business enterprise. This creates a rather narrow view of the objec- tives to be sought—to maximize productivity and satisfy customers, and to accept risks and to take advantage of opportunities as they arise. In the New Public Service, there is an explicit recognition that public administrators are not
The New Public Service: Serving Rather than Steering 557
the business owners of their agencies and programs. Again, as King and Stivers (1998) remind us, government is owned by the citizens. Accordingly, in the New Public Service, the mindset of public administrators is that public programs and resources do not belong to them. Rather, public administrators have accepted the responsibility to serve citizens by acting as stewards of public resources (Kass 1990), conservators of public organizations (Terry 1995), facilitators of citizen- ship and democratic dialogue (Chapin and Denhardt 1995; King and Stivers 1998; Box 1998), catalysts for commu- nity engagement (Denhardt and Gray 1998; Lappé and Du Bois 1994), and street-level leaders (Vinzant and Crothers 1998). This is a very different perspective than that of a business owner focused on profit and efficiency. Accord- ingly, the New Public Service suggests that public admin- istrators must not only share power, work through people, and broker solutions, they must reconceptualize their role in the governance process as responsible participant, not entrepreneur.