Evaluating and extending public service logic–introduction to the special issue

This special issue of Public Management Review, Public Service Logic – Evaluation and Development, seeks both to evaluate the current body of Public Service Logic (PSL) knowledge and to further develop theory and tools for its practical application. Thanks to the hard work of reviewers, each of the six articles in this special issue contributes to those ends. Each reviewer is a noted scholar of PSL specifically, or of the broader public administration and management field. Their expertise sets high standards for manuscripts, which were evaluated for their contribution of knowledge to the discipline, for their application of knowledge to practice (de Ven and Andrew 1989; Whetten 1989; Graham, Kothari and Kreuter 2011), and for their explication of how the proposed advances of theory explain or predict actual experiences (Bacharach 1989). In this editorial essay, we first address the significant themes of knowledge developed across articles, namely ecosystems, value, and user engagement. We then propose and justify future research directions linked to the scope of PSL, the role of value in PSL, and the application of PSL in practice.