Facilitating co-production in public services: management implications from a systematic literature review

Drawing on the results of a systematic literature review of empirical studies, this paper sheds light on six broad factors that facilitate the initiation and implementation of co-production in public services. The factors are classified into two overarching categories: organizational factors, including organizational arrangements, professional roles, and managerial tools; and procedural factors, including participant recruitment, participant preparation, and process design. For each set of factors, the paper provides a series of management implications. It concludes with additional observations for practice. Unfortunately, ‘one-size-fits-all’ does not apply to co-production. Policy-makers and public managers need use their knowledge, skills, and judgment to design, activate, and implement co-production activities. The paper presents three organizational factors (organizational arrangements, professional roles, and managerial tools) and three procedural factors (participant recruitment, participant preparation, and process design) that facilitate the initiation and implementation of co-production. Moreover, for each set of factors, the paper provides an important series of management implications that offer guidance to those who are using, or who wish to use, co-production in their organizations. Thus, this paper provides evidence-driven advice that can assist public managers and policy makers looking for ways to improve co-production in public services

Power games among street-level bureaucrats in the partner-based model – the case of social services

No abstract available

Power games among street-level bureaucrats in the partner-based model – the case of social services

No abstract available

Co-production of Public Services:Institutional Barriers to the Involvement of Citizens in Policy Implementation

Co-production refers to the involvement of citizens/service users in the direct implementation of policy. In practice, this means that public servants and citizens act jointly to deliver public services that would traditionally be the domain of the public servant alone. Co-production is increasingly posited as a desirable model of implementation for health and social policies, development and environment programs, and community safety, among other areas. However, while we have some understanding about the role of context in shaping approaches to policy implementation generally, comparatively less attention has been paid to the contextual contingency of co-production. This chapter employs an institutional logics framework to consider the different ways in which co-production plays a role - or not - in policy implementation. In particular, I discuss the way that a community logic, professional logic, market logic, and state logic in different sectors and different contexts shape public servants’ perceptions of their role visà- vis citizens in policy implementation and produce opportunities and barriers for co-production with citizens.</p

Reshaping the Hybrid Role of Public Servants:Identifying the Opportunity Space for Co-production and the Enabling Skills Required by Professional Co-producers

This chapter starts by introducing how the public sector has adopted different governance metatrends during the last century and how the adoption of these metatrends over time has led to new, hybrid roles for service users and frontline staff. The focus in this chapter is dedicated to the changing roles of the frontline staff and especially the role ascribed to them as professional coproducers. The premise is that professional co-producers must build their capacity to navigate in the local co-production context that is a hybrid of the Old Public Administration, New Public Management, and New Public Governance. This complex, hybrid context is framed in the chapter as “the opportunity space for coproduction.” The problem is that this opportunity space represents an arena in which there is potential for the creation of “double or triple pressure” on the professional co-producers because they are expected to handle top-down and bottom-up expectations simultaneously - and perhaps also horizontal pressures stemming from the expectations of staff from other organizations (interorganizational collaborations). The argument is that professional co-producers must build their capacity to navigate in this dynamic context, acting together with service users and members from other organizations.</p