The paper is relevant to the panel topic as it addresses the hybridization of public sector organisations - in line with the strong emphasis on active citizenship and value co-creation. The study takes two public sector spin outs from the South-West area of England and analyses them as case studies.
Central to this study are social enterprises that are described as a ‘hybrid’ organisations (Doherty et al., 2014) and which have become popular on the agendas of policy makers trying to improve the socio-economic conditions following the global financial crisis in 2008 (Huybrechts and Nicholls, 2012).
This study seeks to critically explore the reshaping the boundaries between private and public value when there is a short cut of resources available in running the public sector.
Public innovation has been dubbed one of the ‘magic concepts’ embraced as new reform strategy for the public sector by policy makers (Voorberg, et al., 2015). The direction of this research was given by looking at proposed research agendas in recently published conceptual papers evaluating years of research concerning hybrid organisations and public innovation (Battilana and Lee, 2014; Wilson and Post, 2013; Voorberg, et al., 2015). Recent publications recommend a more comprehensive study on the hybridity of organisations, its associated challenges, and consequences. Osborne and Brown (2013) have also argued that more research is needed on innovation, that challenges some of the normative assumptions of innovation being always positive. Another useful lens to explore the emergence of social enterprise in the UK is the marketization of the welfare services provided by the state (Dowling and Harvie, 2014).
An inductive research approach has been adopted, based on semi-structured interviews and a multiple case- study design.
The paper hopes to contribute to the existing understanding public sector innovation within public sector spin-outs by providing empirical evidence of the challenges and outcomes associated with hybridisation of public services. Are social enterprises a valid means to alternative public sector organising in light of the existing resource constraints in public service delivery?
