ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to discuss public managers at multilateral institutions using the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a lens to examine public value creation, articulation, rhetoric, leadership, destruction, legitimation, and survival. The chapter is a departure from domestic (national-level) public value creation to instead look at wider notions of the public at the global level, with concomitant challenges that include the application of rhetoric, questions of leadership, the addressing of articulated values, and the nature of reciprocal legitimation. It applies propositions presented in the context of supranational entities toward multilateral institutions, finding that the challenges are an order of magnitude still greater, given the complexity and sheer size of the world-public. It applies the strategic triangle framework to examine the Public Value (PV)-oriented considerations of legitimacy, recognition, operational resources, and accountability. The chapter finds that multilateral institutions face extensive challenges in executing effective PV creation, similarly to supranational institutions (European Union, EU), and Public Value Theory (PVT) can help to inform the nature of these limitations while providing some suggestions for what to address as part of the concluding section.
