Resource or Threat? Professionals' Response to Volunteer Involvement in Public Service Production

In addition to traditional demands such as documenting work effort and work more effectively many professionals in the public sector face a new challenge: To actively engage and cooperate with citizens, service users and... [ view full abstract ]

In addition to traditional demands such as documenting work effort and work more effectively many professionals in the public sector face a new challenge: To actively engage and cooperate with citizens, service users and volunteers in public service production (i.e., coproduction of public services). Examples include nurses and health assistants that engage with volunteers in providing care for elderly citizens in nursing homes or with patients in hospitals to improve rehabilitation. Despite its appealing features, engaging and cooperating with citizens, service users and volunteers in the public service production may involve costs. Following the sociology of professions, professionals working at frontline are expected to care a great deal about protecting the status and the discretionary autonomy of their profession. In this perspective, citizens’, service users’ and volunteers’ participation in public service production represent potential threats to frontline professionals if they take over tasks or do not comply with the norms and standards prescribing appropriate behaviors in the particular professional context. 

       In this paper, we integrate this perspective with the literatures on coproduction to develop theoretical arguments for understanding how increased engagement of volunteers in public service production may cause professionals to perceive volunteers as a threat to their own job or profession. In developing our theoretical framework, we distinguish between the type of coproduction (e.g., is coproduction related to core or complementary tasks) and argue that engaging volunteers in the production of core services renders a particularly high risk of creating threat perceptions among professionals with potential negative effects on their work motivation. To start evaluating the validity of these arguments, the paper conducts a survey experiment in which professionals are randomly assigned to different version of a single vignette. Versions will describe scenarios where the degree and type of coproduction vary. The empirical analysis takes place in the context of elderly care in Denmark because this constitutes one of the services areas that have seen an increasing engagement of volunteers in public service production during the last decade.