Dear Colleagues,  

Value creation for service users, communities, and society should be the focus of all public services (Alford, 2016). However, over the past four decades, there has been a sustained emphasis on measuring economic aspects of value and under the pre-eminence of new public management, the focus has been largely on the efficacy of internal business processes rather than the effectiveness of services in meeting needs.  More recently, the concept of co-creation has become of increasing interest to academics, policymakers, and practitioners alike. Co-creation has been used to refer both to the collaborations of various actors to innovate public services to solve a shared problem (Torfing et al, 2016) but also, based on the service management literature, has referred to the process through which value accrues for public service users during and following service delivery (Hardyman et al, 2019). This Special Issue will seek, primarily, to shed light on and develop the second issue. It will present papers which explore the various interactions occurring in the public sector which may enable, constrain, or co-create value for service users, communities, and society. 

From a public service logic perspective, the locus of value creation moves from intra-organizational efficacy towards a dynamic set of interactions within a complex service ecosystem, but which stem primarily from the service interaction, where the processes of production and consumption interconnect (Strokosch and Osborne 2019). Various actors, including public service users, organisations from across sectors and policymakers are thus understood as interacting in a relational process of value co-creation. However, the actuality, intricacies, and interconnections between actors and the processes through which value is created, enabled, or constrained have not been sufficiently understood and developed. Indeed, although a comprehensive research exists on co-production as a participative process through which citizens might be engaged in the transformation of public services, far less is known about how value is co-created during and following service delivery, whether that be face to face or digital encounters (Hardyman et al, 2019) or within a service user’s own life context.  Furthermore, little is known about how novel approaches enable co-creation, such as contemporary service design and co-design methodologies (Wetter-Edman et al, 2014) or Living Labs (Gascó 2017) impact value outcomes for public service users or society. 

This Special Issue calls for papers which offer insight into different processes of value co-creation occurring within public service ecosystems, including both those that are intrinsic to service delivery but also those that involve extrinsic forms of participation, such as co-production, co-design and also inter-organisational relationships.  Importantly, papers should seek to reflect upon the value creation processes which might lead to value creation/destruction or which might be enabled/constrained in the interaction between actors on public service ecosystems.  Within this context, this Special Issue is interested in papers presenting new evidence on value co-creation in public services preferably through case studies or related research designs, although other theoretical or empirical papers are welcome too.

The focus of this Special Issue is three-fold:

1. Investigate the value co-creation processes taking place within public service ecosystems and their implications for how services are designed and delivered in practice. 
2. Explore the extent to which value, in its different dimensions, is co-created through these collaborative processes.
3. Explore the challenges and opportunities around the capacity for co-creation to drive innovation in the design, delivery, content and outcomes achieved by public services. 

We call for research on co-creations from different public service settings, with a particular focus on:

• case studies on value co-creation during service delivery
• digital transformation
• service design
• public living labs
• collaborations of public, private, and third sector organizations

Around these or other co-creation areas, research may deal with the following issues:

• Public value and new evidence on co-creation
• Idea/design/decision process
• Co-creation processes and phases
• Drivers/facilitators/incentives systems and the role of users
• Capabilities and skills for co-creation
• Methods and techniques for user or citizen participation
• Barriers and obstacles, scalability issues
• Impacts and outcomes
• Spatial dimensions (national, regional, local level) and their articulation

These lists are not exclusive; other examples and areas of value co-creation are also welcome. Papers with managerial or policy implications are of particular interest too.

References

Alford, J (2016) ‘Co-production, interdependence and publicness: extending public service dominant logic’, Public Management Review, 18(5): 673-691. doi:10.1080/14719037.2015.1111659

Gascó, Mila. (2017). “Living labs: Implementing open innovation in the public sector”. Government Information Quarterly 34, no. 1: 90-98. doi:10.1016/j.giq.

Hardyman, W., Kitchener, M. and Daunt, K.L. (2019) ‘What matters to me! User conceptions of value in specialist cancer care’, Public Management Review, 21(11):1687-1706. doi:10.1080/14719037.2019.1619808

Strokosch, K. and Osborne, S.P. (2020) ‘Co-experience, co-production and co-governance: an ecosystem approach to the analysis of value creation, Policy & Politics, vol xx, no xx: 1–18. doi: 10.1332/030557320X15857337955214

Torfing, J., Sørensen, E., and A. Røiseland (2016) ‘Transforming the public sector into an arena for co-creation: Barriers, drivers, benefits, and ways forward’, Administration and Society 51(5): 795-825. doi:10.1177/0095399716680057

Wetter-Edman, K., Sangiorgi, D., Edvardsson, B., Holmlid, S., Grönroos, C., & Mattelmäki, T. (2014) ’Design for Value Co-Creation: Exploring Synergies Between Design for Service and Service Logic’, Service Science, 6(2):106-121, doi:10.1287/serv.2014.0068

Prof. Dr. Luis Rubalcaba
Dr. Kirsty Strokosch
Dr. Anne Vorre Hansen
Dr. Maria Røhnebæk
Dr. Christine Liefooghe
Guest Editors

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• public value 
• co-creation 
• best practice 
• living labs 
• service design 
• digital transformation 
• innovation networks