Public Value Co-creation Research Articles

Public services as practices: towards a framework for understanding co-creation and co-destruction of private and public value

ABSTRACT Despite the importance of public services, a sound conceptualization of what they are is lacking. Following an analysis of research on public service logic, public value and practices, this paper proposes a public services as practices framework. This framework defines public services as bundles of shared public value co-creation practices that consists of templates and performances. While templates are designed to co-create public and private value, these types of value can be both co-created and co-destroyed during performances. The framework contributes by conceptualizing what public services are and how public and private value are co-created and co-destroyed through public services.

New Public Governance and Public Value Co-creation: The Case of the European Court of Auditors Environmental Audits

This article seeks to bring evidence on public value co-creation between public auditors and auditees, with a focus on the environment, as a matter of pressing interest for the citizens. We analyse data from performance audit reports issued by the European Court of Auditors: the tonality of audit conclusions and the corresponding auditees’ replies and the degree of acceptance and implementation of audit recommendations by the auditees. The analysis is performed using the theoretical perspectives of institutional logics and public value co-creation. We use qualitative and quantitative methods, including sentiment analysis and bivariate analysis. We find evidence that the EU public auditors increased their focus on environmental issues, following an increasingly trending institutional logic of focusing on non-financial topics of public interest. However, the tonality of environment-related audit conclusions and the auditees’ replies does not differ from the non-environment-related ones. We also demonstrate that public auditors co-created public value together with the auditees through a significantly higher acceptance of their recommendations in environmental than in non-environmental audits. The article contributes to the existing literature by using data from a supranational supreme audit institution and by applying an innovative research methodology in the audit field (sentiment analysis). It also offers practitioners valuable insights on performance audit’s evolution and impact. Although the data is limited to one supreme audit institution, this research can open future research avenues to perform comparative analysis with other supreme audit institutions or extend the research scope to content analysis of the substance of audit findings. Este artículo busca aportar evidencias sobre la co-creación de valor público entre los auditores públicos y los entes auditados, poniendo el foco en el medio ambiente como un asunto de interés apremiante para la ciudadanía. Analizamos los datos de los informes de auditoría de gestión emitidos por el Tribunal de Cuentas Europeo: el tono de las conclusiones de auditoría y las correspondientes respuestas de los auditados y el grado de aceptación e implementación de las recomendaciones de auditoría por parte de los auditados. El análisis se realiza desde las perspectivas teóricas de las lógicas institucionales y la co-creación de valor público. Utilizamos métodos cualitativos y cuantitativos, incluido el análisis de sentimiento y el análisis bivariado. Encontramos evidencia de que los auditores públicos de la UE incrementaron su enfoque en temas medioambientales, emitiendo un número cada vez mayor de informes relacionados con el medioambiente, siguiendo una lógica institucional actual de la nueva gobernanza pública de enfocarse en temas no financieros de interés público. No obstante, la tonalidad de los informes de auditoría, las conclusiones y las respuestas de los auditados en auditorias medioambientales no difieren del resto. También demostramos que los auditores públicos cocrearon valor público junto con los auditados a través de una aceptación significativamente mayor de sus recomendaciones en las auditorías ambientales si la comparamos con la aceptación en las no ambientales. El artículo contribuye a la literatura existente utilizando datos de una institución de auditoria supranacional y aplicando una metodología de investigación innovadora en el campo de la auditoría (análisis de sentimiento). También ofrece a los profesionales información valiosa sobre la evolución y el impacto de la auditoría de gestión en el sector público. Aunque los datos se limitan a una única institución auditora, este artículo puede abrir vías de investigación futuras para realizar análisis comparativos con otros tribunales de cuentas o ampliar el alcance de la investigación al análisis de contenido de las conclusiones de auditoría y de las respuestas de los auditados.

Digitalization and Public Value Co-Creation in Public Sector Organizations : The Citizens as Co-Creators

Public value co-creation emerged as a perspective that takes public service delivery beyond effectiveness and efficiency to the services that involve different actors which meet the citizens’ satisfaction and expectation. This development has necessitated the adoption of several strategies by governments aimed at achieving this goal. Arising from this understanding, this paper’s objective rests upon the exploration of the correlation between digitalization and public value co-creation in public sector organizations viewing the citizens as co-creators. Utilizing secondary sources of data, the paper compellingly argues that the citizens could participate more actively and effectively in digitalization driven public value co-creation in public sector organizations. However, it is highlighted in the study that digital divide is a potential obstacle which could undermine the role of citizens towards digitalization driven public value co-creation in public sector organizations. As a panacea, the paper recommends for decentralization of digital governance so as to provide majority of the citizens (especially those at the remote areas) the opportunity to participate in the public value co-creation processes.

Technical Infrastructure to Support Public Value Co-creation in Smart City

Technical Infrastructure to Support Public Value Co-creation in Smart City

Enhancing public value with co-creation in public land development: The role of municipalities

Municipalities in Sweden use public land development to engage public and private actors in collaborative urban experimentation and innovation to create public value. This points to a wider scope of potential and current utility for public land development than previously theorised. The aim of this paper is to investigate municipalities’ use of public land development to enable and structure public value co-creation, and to provide suggestions for enhancing public value. Findings are based on a multiple case study of five flagship urban development projects located in different municipalities in Sweden. We illustrate how municipalities co-design public value propositions with different public and private actors, which aretranslated into criteria for choosing developers to allocate land to and project-specific requirements for housing development. When co-designing public value propositions and subsequent requirements, the main role of the municipality is to form arenas where relevant actors can collaboratively find creative solutions to emerging problems rooted in value conflicts. Findings align with previous research on public value co-creation in other contexts, demonstrating an appropriate application of the theory and potential for further theoretical development across research fields.

From co-creation to public value through collaborative platforms—the case of Norwegian kindergartens

IMPACT Making sure that citizens and users are key actors in public value co-creation is a challenge. A particular difficulty is how to include marginalized citizens and users to give them a voice in deliberating public value. This article discusses how kindergartens can be used as a platform for co-created policy-making. The authors provide practical advice on how to facilitate socially-inclusive public encounters with relevant policy stakeholders. By using a universal welfare institution as the platform, the article shows how public participation in co-creation can be more socially-inclusive and fair.

A citizen participation model for co-creation of public value in a smart city

ABSTRACT Information technologies, social media and the Internet of Things are tools that may encourage civic participation for the co-creation of public value and can strengthen the role of citizens in urban governance. This work seeks to explore of how social media and IoT based participation enhances the interaction between government and citizen, and for government, what capabilities are required for continuous citizen participation. The paper examines the power dynamics between government and citizens employing Giddens’s theory of structuration as an analytical framework. In addition, dynamic capability theory has been applied to determine the capabilities of government needed for continuous civic participation, while proposing a citizen participation model for public value co-creation. The proposed model can serve as a framework for recognizing the vital role of citizens in public policymaking and public service provision in the smart era.

New development: Mitigating disvalue through a material understanding of public value co-creation

IMPACT This article introduces a strategy that can be used by managers to (co)design, (co)analyse and (co)assess processes of public value co-creation. Actions for implementation by public managers are also recommended, such as keeping a register of co-creation processes; describing the settings and the material relations among the actors taking part in co-creation; and accounting over time for the material effects of co-creation processes. Watchdogs and civil society organizations should be monitoring the effects of public value co-creation processes from a material perspective.

Public Value and Citizen-Driven Digital Innovation: A Cryptocurrency Study

ABSTRACT Public value theory was conceived in a time before the far-reaching consequences of the digital era were fully realized, without sufficient explicit consideration of the dynamic and disruptive shifts that might occur on the technological frontier, especially when driven by civil society. As such, the disruptive and citizen-driven nature of many digital technologies, such as cryptocurrencies and the blockchain, has yet to be incorporated into the public value discourse. This article examines the relevance of the public manager to disruptive digital innovations, arguing that value creation is a function of addressing the digital aspirations of citizens, and making technological disruption into a conduit for public value co-creation that is driven by citizens. This is accomplished through mechanisms such as regulatory and policy initiatives that ensure public managers strike a balance between innovation and accountability. It theorizes this using Moore’s strategic triangle to foresee a role for proactive engagement by public managers in citizen-driven public value creation that balances innovative impulses and stronger accountability.

Travelling along the public service co-production road: a bibliometric analysis and interpretive review

ABSTRACT A bibliometric analysis and an interpretive review have been undertaken to advance the debate on public service co-production and public value co-creation, conceiving them as the cornerstones of public service logic. The systematization of 114 articles, which were sorted in 4 clusters through bibliographic coupling, revealed a ‘new normality’ of public service delivery relying on citizens’ involvement as value co-creators. Citizens and regular producers should be empowered to act as partners in co-designing and co-delivering public services. However, the interaction between citizens and regular producers generates value tensions, which should be addressed to avoid backlash on public value generation.

Public Value Co-Creation in Living Labs—Results from Three Case Studies

Living Labs—innovation units established to introduce new methods and approaches into public sector organizations—have received a lot of attention as methods for experimentation and open innovation practices in public sector organizations. However, little is known so far about how they co-create public value and which conditions influence these co-creation practices. Therefore, the research questions are: which organizational factors influence the process of public value co-creation and which outcomes and values are produced as a result? The research questions were answered by employing a qualitative research approach conducting semi-structured interviews with employees and participants of three living labs in Germany and Austria. The results show top-level support and lab leadership as the most important context factors. Living labs produce tangible and intangible outcomes. The tangible outcomes are the products developed within the lab, and the intangible outcomes are created by the interaction between the lab’s participants. The main contributions are twofold: first, context factors are identified that lead to the success of co-creation processes within living labs. Second, the study contributes to the literature on public value because it is shown that participation in living labs itself leads to added value in addition to the tangible and intangible outcomes.

Boundary-spanning in public value co-creation through the lens of multilevel governance

ABSTRACT The prospects and challenges of boundary-spanning public value co-creation are one of the quintessential features of public management in the current age of complexity. This paper argues that boundary-spanning takes on a heightened salience in multilevel jurisdictions where actors must not only navigate the horizontal contours of inter-organizational relations but also vertical tiers of jurisdiction in pursuit of joint action. Drawing insights from the multilevel governance literature, and using Canada's recent Innovation Superclusters Initiative as case study, the paper sheds some light on how public managers and policy entrepreneurs navigate strategically across boundaries in federal and other multitiered systems.

Value Co-Creation between Public Service Organizations and the Private Sector: An Organizational Capabilities Perspective

Theoretically based on public service logic (PSL), this paper explores the barriers and capabilities surrounding public sector value co-creation with private sector organizations in the context of digital transformation. Specifically, value co-creation efforts at a large public transport and rail infrastructure provider are examined from multiple perspectives using an exploratory case study approach. Based on qualitative interview data, six barriers that hinder value co-creation in public service ecosystems and five corresponding organizational capabilities required to overcome them are identified. The study contributes to the field of public management research by shedding light on the concept of value co-creation in public-private sector digitalization collaborations.

Feeling Valued and Adding Value: A Participatory Action Research Project on Co-creating Practices of Social Inclusion in Kindergartens and Communities.

Background: Contemporary public health problems connect to the social determinants of health, with a growing recognition of social inclusion as imperative to sustainable development. In this quest for social inclusion, early childhood and families are of particular interest. Although co-creation is suggested as viable path to support well-being, less is known how social inclusion might be co-created in practice. The aim of this study was to explore how Participatory Action Research (PAR) can be a tool for transformative practices in a local community, pointing to kindergartens as meeting places for recognizing social inclusion as a common value in early childhood.Methods: A qualitative PAR study was embedded in a Norwegian municipality as an integrated part of their local public health work. The study involved a wide range of participants and stakeholders in three kindergartens and the wider community. Together, we explored potentials for co-creating social inclusion to achieve well-being through cycles of transformative actions and reflections. Reflexive thematic analysis was applied to generate patterns and themes in the data.Results: The participants formulated and took on ownership to an inclusive agenda through the PAR-process. Acts of inclusion was framed by an intersection between political aims of achieving health and well-being for all and public value co-creation unfolding at the level of the place, in the context of the Norwegian welfare regime. To feel valued and adding value was seen as important aspects for social inclusion. Four themes were generated from analysis; (1) Co-creating a shared vision of inclusive communities, (2) Becoming aware and empowered through caring, sharing and collaboration, (3) Places and spaces of inclusiveness in kindergartens and beyond, and (4) Valuing and practicing inclusion, and signs of transformative change.Conclusions: Through the PAR process, parents, kindergartens employees, community members and policy makers appear to have opened a creative toolbox for inclusive and transformational change through formulating and co-creating inclusion and well-being as public values. The results suggest that local actors might support adaptive social systems to taking on relational responsibility for inclusive processes and outcomes in the pursuit of well-being for all.

Strategic management as an enabler of co-creation in public services

The current transformations in society, the economy and the public sector call for the development of more unified theoretical frameworks. This article takes the literature on strategic management as a theoretical entry angle and aims to better understand how the adoption of models of strategic management can enable processes of public value co-creation. Utilising the literature centred on the notion of ‘schools of thought’ in the strategic management of public services, the article discusses how co-creation as a mode of governance in public services can contribute to innovative public service solutions and value co-creation. The Welsh Water’s ‘Water Resilient Community’ – a project characterised by long-term strategic planning as well as by local innovation – is used to illustrate the argument. Four propositions on the drivers/enablers and key managerial issues for undertaking a strategic approach to co-creation as a mode of governance are offered to enhance future practice, research and theory.

Italian mayors and the management of COVID-19: adaptive leadership for organizing local governance

ABSTRACT Drawing on a survey of 25 mayors of municipalities belonging to the Metropolitan City of Milan, Italy this paper presents an investigation into the main problems they faced during Phase 1 (lockdown) and Phase 2 (post-lockdown, pre-vaccine); the leadership actions they implemented in Phases 1 and 2; and the leadership actions they would prioritize in case of a new emergency. The results contribute to the building of knowledge on local governance and leadership models – specifically regarding conditions of emergency. Four key issues emerged: (i) the importance of adaptive leadership and of anticipatory governance frameworks aimed at providing direction in situations of emergency (e.g. what to do in case of scarce mask availability and/or of local coronavirus disease 2019 [COVID-19] hotspots); (ii) the importance of promoting institutional spaces for cooperation and collaboration with citizens in their role as volunteers and of other organizational stakeholders willing to contribute to public value co-creation; (iii) the role of technology as an enabler and medium for sharing information and crowdsourcing resources; and (iv) the importance of safe and trusted platforms for knowledge sharing among the mayors and with the relevant organizational stakeholders.

English

This study attempts to enlarge knowledge on public value co-creation within a complex environment such as artification. The transfiguration of object that is not regarded as art in the traditional sense into something art-like underpins the development of processes suitable for analyses within the co-creation framework. The case of “EXIT”, the photographic exhibition on Ghost hotel in the province of Pavia (Lombardy, Northern Italy) has been carried out in order to achieve the research aim. The results, came out from the content analysis, demonstrated how artification triggers public value co-creation under specific conditions like the implementation of managerial logics, tools, and model. The conceptual model of artification co-creation attempts to fulfil the literature gaps which call for more investigations on the degree of citizen engagement in relation to the outcome of value creation within the democratic sphere.   Key words: Artification, value, co-creation, multi-actors engagement, strategic triangle, outcome, content analysis.

Integrated reporting and change: evidence from public universities

PurposeThis paper aims to set out the case for integrated reporting (IR) and its potential to lead to change in the public sector by examining it in practice and analyzing the challenges associated with its implementation.Design/methodology/approachThe paper investigates the role of IR in the public sector through the development of a theoretical framework applied to a case study focused on the University of Udine in Italy.FindingsIR can be considered more as an incremental than a groundbreaking transformation of existing arrangements and approaches. The analysis revealed that the vagueness, complexity and intrinsic discrepancy between the IR concept and its operationalization brought the University of Udine to challenge and debate the IR approach and ultimately, to reconceptualize and implement its own version that better fitted its strategic aims, its intended audience and its status as a public entity.Research limitations/implicationsThe application of the findings to other contexts should be further investigated, while the analytical framework should be applied to different settings and could be enriched to add knowledge and sharpen the paradigms of integrated thinking and value co-creation. Moreover, the interviews focused on people directly involved in the preparation of the integrated report, excluding other stakeholders. Further research could explore their perceptions of IR and focus on their understanding of the IR as well as the value co-creation process.Practical implicationsThe findings provide decision makers with insights about how IR can be promoted to enhance its impact on value co-creation. The key processes to be considered for a public organization are integrated thinking and value co-creation, while the key aspects to be investigated in an integrated report for the public sector are materiality and stakeholder engagement. Yet, the IR framework is missing indications on how to account for stakeholders' inputs, outputs and outcomes in a value co-creation process, which is fundamental in a public service logic.Originality/valueThe results shed further light on two fundamental phenomena in the public sector, namely, integrated thinking and value co-creation. The paper also answers the call for more empirical research on IR's rhetoric and practice and on its concrete role in the value creation process.

The role of collaborative housing initiatives in public value co-creation – a case study of Freiburg, Germany

This article reviews the role of collaborative housing initiatives in public value co-creation. Collaborative housing initiatives have emerged in response to the growing need for affordable housing and stable neighbourhood networks against the background of shifts in social values, a mobilised society, and austerity measures on the part of the welfare state. This study focuses on investigating citizens’ motives to participate in a collaborative housing initiative and their role in public value co-creation. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected between December 2017 and March 2018 using a mixed-methods approach and analysed. The findings reveal that dimensions related to social sustainability – such as civic engagement, inclusion and integration, and diversity and social mix – enhance people’s attitude towards collaborative housing projects. Practical implications and avenues for future research are discussed.

Sustainability Accounting and Reporting in the Public Sector: Towards Public Value Co-Creation?

The economic, social, and environmental contingencies of the last two decades have called into question the need for public sector organizations to align accounting practices with sustainable concerns. Sustainability refers to the ability of organizations to co-create economic value in the long run, involving all stakeholders, safeguarding the environment, and generating well-being for the community. While this topic attracts increasing interests from several perspectives, there is a lack of a comprehensive assessment of how academia is debating it. Therefore, this paper reviews the field of sustainability, accounting, and reporting (SAR) in the public sector in order to develop insights into how the literature is developing the theme of public value (PV) co-creation, offer a critique of the state-of-the-art to date, and outline future research opportunities. The study is based on a structured literature review (SLR) methodology that enables studying the corpus of scholarly literature, developing insights, critical reflections, and future research paths. The results highlight that, although the involvement of stakeholders appears as crucial for developing SAR practices in the public sector, scholars have not yet adopted a PV co-creation perspective to this phenomenon, since, at best, previous studies only focused on the stakeholders’ involvement, without considering other aspects such as synergistic integration of resources and alignment of purposes. Therefore, academics should rethink their research setting and implications to provide a significant contribution by conducting studies capable of leading future development of SA in the public sector.