Best practice is not just “best”: An empirical study based on judges’ perceptions

This paper proposes five major criteria—importance, innovativeness, effectiveness, sustainability and replicability—for determining best practices in public management. The influence of each criterion on the probability that a judge recommends a case as a best practice is examined using data from the first Best Practice Cases for Urban Governance in the Yangtze River Delta competition. The results show that perceptions of innovativeness, effectiveness, sustainability and replicability, but not of importance, significantly influence judges’ recommendations. These findings demonstrate that innovativeness, sustainability and replicability are important in evaluations of best practices, in addition to effectiveness. Specifically, innovativeness is as important as effectiveness, which indicates that judges perceive innovation to be closely linked to best practices. In addition, the empirical results partly refute the criticism that sustainability and replicability are not considered in evaluations of best practices. This paper can serve to inspire public management practitioners to consider the innovativeness, effectiveness, sustainability and replicability when developing best practices.