Social wealth and the wellbeing of the individual have many sources, amongst them public services, contributions of private households, and also civil society and private companies as well as services related to public goods. Public value represents a public administration paradigm and a governance approach, which focuses on the collective aim of public value and processes for reaching this aim, and which highlights the role of the state in these processes. The focus is placed on civil society and the relationship between citizens and the state, which were neglected in the New Public Management approach. Citizens are no longer conceived as passive recipients or consumers, but are supposed to (have the possibility to) participate in public value, generating political processes in diverse ways and making active contributions. Public Value Management can be understood as a reaction of neoliberal deficits of New Public Management, since public managers also play an active role in this perspective. Public managers’ tasks now include the steering of networks of deliberation and service provision and the maintenance of the overall system capacity. Public value orientation aims at strengthening the public sphere and at a fair distribution of goods and services, as well as at developing mechanisms that enable deliberation about values and value preferences.