Abstract
This paper presents the results of the content analysis of 139 Web of Science papers focused on collaborative innovation with external stakeholders of public administration, specifically on co-production and co-creation. The analysis included papers published between 2009 and 2018 and was based on a coding scheme consisting of 12 parameters grouped into four groups: paper descriptors, financial support of the research, methodological framework, and co-creation characteristics. The results reveal a considerable increase in researchers’ interest in co-production and co-creation in the context of public administration in the last few years. This is particularly the case in Northern and Western Europe, where Anglo-Saxon and Nordic administrative traditions dominate. Furthermore, the results show that co-creation is most often placed in the contexts of social policy and welfare, as well as health care. Over the selected period, research seldom addressed companies as a target group in the co-creation of public services—in comparison to citizens and internal users. More than three quarters of the papers observed were empirical and less than 20% were quantitative. In general, a lack of conceptual clarity was often identified through the interchangeable usage of the terms co-creation and co-creation and the low level of international comparison—the majority of the papers focused on case descriptions at a national level, even though collaborative innovation is strongly related to administrative traditions dominating in specific regions.
Highlights
Collaborative innovation is ‘the new black’—the new buzz concept that is expected to provide a solution to the ‘wicked’ problems the public sector is facing today (Hartley et al 2013; Agger and Lund 2017; Torfing 2019)
This paper aims to analyse the state of the art and potential research trends in the relevant literature with regard to the above two popular concepts of collaborative innovation, i.e., co-creation and co-production
Fieldmethodological of co-creation/co-production implementation we developed a coding scheme consisting of 12 parameters organised into the following categories
Summary
Collaborative innovation is ‘the new black’—the new buzz concept that is expected to provide a solution to the ‘wicked’ problems the public sector is facing today (Hartley et al 2013; Agger and Lund 2017; Torfing 2019). Co-creation presumes a more active relationship among actors and constructive exchanges of different types of knowledge, skills, ideas, and resources, at a higher (e.g., meta, strategic, or policy) level of change, beyond the service level usually implied in the case of co-production (Sevin 2016; Edelenbos et al 2018; Torvinen and Haukipuro 2018; Touati and Maillet 2018) In spite of these specifics, setting clear criteria for distinguishing between these intertwined concepts has been an enormous challenge for scholars. This paper does not aim to solve this conceptual puzzle, but to provide an informed theoretical basis for more consolidated future academic debate and contribution in this regard
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