Corresponding Chair:
Stephen Osborne, stephen.osborne@ed.ac.uk
Description:
Over the past decade, a transformative approach to understanding and delivering public service has evolved – Public Service Logic (PSL) (Osborne 2018). This puts value creation for citizens and society at the heart of public services delivery and management. This approach challenges the traditional focus of public management on the structure and content of public services and rather questions the value that public services can add to the lives of citizens and society.
Such an approach is at the heart of smart public services for the twenty-first century. This is because it focuses public policy and public management practice upon (external) value creation for citizens and society rather than on the (internal) management and performance of public service organisations (PSOs) alone. The latter focus is not unimportant of course, but is only important in the context of the value that PSOs can help to co-create for citizens and society.
This approach is an important evolution of public management theory. Nonetheless, many issues remain to be addressed. Not least the advancement of our understanding of the concept of ‘value’ in a public service context and that goes beyond the often ambiguous and diffuse concept of ‘Public Value’. This panel will directly address these issues and push forward our understanding of value creation and co-creation through public services, by exploring and evaluating its key processes, dimensions and impact.
Theoretical and empirical papers are consequently welcome that explore the co-design, co-production and co-creation of value through public service delivery, and the implications of these processes for smart public services.
All paper submissions are welcome, though papers would be especially welcome that:
- examine the concept of ‘value’ in the context of public services,
- explore the processes and inter-relationships of co-design, co-production and value co-creation,
- evaluate the contingencies both of these processes and relationships and of value creation/co-creation through public service delivery,
- review the theory, practice and impact of design and co-design approaches to public service reform
- assess the possible roles of third parties in these processes, including third sector organisations/social enterprises and service design agencies,
- appraise the roles of citizens, public service users, and/or public services professionals and staff in value creation/co-creation (and also how these roles might be facilitated and evolved),
- develop approaches to the evaluation and audit both of value/public value and of the processes of its creation,
- consider the nature of, and relationship between, private (individual) and public (collective) value, and/or
- investigate the ‘dark side’ of value destruction.
The panel will run over 6 sessions in one and a half days of the conference. A maximum of 18 – 24 papers will be accepted only, to allow their intensive discussion and development. Agreement in principle has already been obtained from Routledge to publish a key edited collection on value creation and public services delivery, edited by the co-chairs of this panel. All the papers presented in this panel will be developed by collaboration between the panel chairs and the paper authors, for inclusion in this book.
Any queries about submissions should be directed to the Panel chairs.