The importance of co-production in developing and delivering effective public services is widely recognized. However, in different contexts of local government across societies, aims, practices, and values of organizations and actor groups (for example front-line workers, civil servants, politicians, service users and citizens) can vary significantly. In this article, I am addressing the development of public service delivery and service systems by exploring the limits of co-production and public value-creation through conflicts in inter-organizational collaboration.
Empirically, this qualitative case study concentrates on a local initiative aimed at achieving effective youth service delivery in a Finnish city, Turku. The city had made strategical choices to develop youth services in order to shift the balance towards preventative work, and develop the highly institutionalized child welfare services’ cost structure. In achieving these goals, an external service producer was considered resilient, and more capable of utilizing effective working methods.
By revealing and exploring the conflicts in this service integration process, the article aims to increase empirical and theoretical understanding of the development of effective service delivery and public service systems. The research question is how conflicts that actors experienced in service integration affected the service development and value-creation processes. The research strategy was case study, highlighting the importance of context and momentary, local interaction. Data, seven semi-structured interviews and one focus group interview with key informants, were analysed using theory-driven content analysis.
The concept of conflict combines insights from existential phenomenology (Rauhala, 1983; 1992) and complex responsive processes of relating (Stacey & Griffin, 2005; Stacey, 2011). Combining these theorizations, conflicts can be seen as one party’s (individual’s or group of people’s) subjective experience and understanding of a given situation, and notion of the differencing intentions of the actors involved. Theorizations highlight that it is inevitable to interact with people who form different meanings and have different experiences. In addition, the linkage between co-production and value-creation in developing and designing public services derives from the theorizations of public service-dominant logic (Osborne et al., 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016; Osborne & Strokosch, 2013; Radnor et al., 2014; Hardyman et al., 2015).
As a result, the conflicts identified addressed issues of stakeholder’s power relations when defining the service users and their needs, and evaluating the effectiveness of the service. Moreover, the conflicts revealed the governance traditions of the city affected the service delivery (Voorberg et al., 2017): the service was changing towards the traditions of the city’s service system. Public organization could not govern the collaboration of different stakeholders in order to foster the development of effective public service system, and, despite of the strategical statements made, attempted value-creation process was turning into a value-destruction (Alford, 2008, Osborne et al., 2016, Bovaird et al., 2017). Furthermore, results revealed a need to consider the public services to be delivered within a holistic public service system which places ‘the lived experience’ (Osborne et al., 2016) of service users at the core of the changing traditions of governance.
Rossi_IRSPM_Looking_beyond_Conflicts.pdf 