Public Value Disclosure in Healthcare Organizations' Strategic Planning: Evidence from Italy

Recent years have seen a growing academic interest in the concept of Public Value (PV), marking a shift from the efficiency-driven New Public Management (NPM) paradigm toward a broader focus on societal outcomes, trust, and legitimacy. Despite this conceptual development, empirical research - especially in the healthcare sector - remains limited. This study addresses this gap by investigating the extent to which Italian Healthcare Organizations (HCOs) disclose PV in their strategic planning documents and which PV dimensions are most emphasized. Drawing on Faulkner and Kaufman's (2018) PV operational framework and Oliver's (1991) strategic responses model, a manual content analysis of 45 Local Health Authorities' (LHAs) Integrated Activity and Organization Plans (IAOPs) for the 2025-2027 period was conducted. The findings reveal that, despite well-documented contextual differences between North-Center and South-Islands Italian regions, LHAs exhibit virtually identical PV disclosure patterns. Interpreted through Oliver's model, this convergence suggests that PV disclosure in strategic planning is primarily driven by institutional isomorphism rather than genuine strategic prioritization. These findings contribute to the PV literature by offering empirical evidence of compliance-driven PV disclosure in an under-researched context, providing a replicable measurement instrument, and advancing understanding of how institutional pressures shape PV disclosure in healthcare.