ABSTRACT
What is “public” about the mission of public enterprises? This should be a central question in research and practice, not least because many of the boundaries of the world’s “publicness map” have undergone significant shifts since the recession. The query is fundamental for the organizational level of analysis and, indeed, to understand the true meaning of expressions such as “mission drift” or “diminishing publicness” – the terms used to describe the consequences of the mix of public and private action. Overall, the chapter compels us to rethink what we know about the public mission. The main conclusion is that the notion remains blurred, also due to the intrinsic lack of clarity of the underlying concepts of goals, values and public. The chapter offers a useful heuristic tool that can help shed light on key issues of interest to the research and to provide a meaningful springboard for future scholarship.
