Unpacking value destruction: Exploring the dark side of public service delivery

This paper is devoted to the empirical examination of value destruction as the ‘dark side’ of public service delivery. In particular, we emphasize that current scholarship on value creation/destruction is problematically distributed into two discrete foci, respectively concerning ‘public value’ and ‘private value’. Drawing upon the data from four city-scale carbon reduction projects, we found that the endeavors of public and private value creation can conflict with each other, which results in value destruction or failure in both/either value aspects. We thereby established a conceptual framework to underpin the understanding and governance of value destruction.