Doing better with less: do behavioural capabilities affect street level bureaucrats’ ability to deliver public value?

Street Level Bureaucrat (SLB) and Conservation of Resources theories are used to develop measures for Public Value (PV) and a higher-order construct comprising psychological capacities and behavioural capabilities - HERO-INE, and to test whether it is an antecedent of Public Service Motivation (PSM) and Public Value (PV) using data from 259 SLBs working in Australian healthcare collected at two points in time and analysed using Structural Equation Modelling. HERO-INE, PSM, and in-role behaviour explained approximately 40% of the SLBs' PV. The implication is that organizations must ensure that SLBs have the psychological and behavioural capabilities to deliver PV.