First we take Manhattan – creating value by changing the system from within

Through associations evoked by the lyrics from Leonard Cohens song First we take Manhattan, the paper explore what public values are created in a co-creation processes between actors within a public organization and a... [ view full abstract ]

Through associations evoked by the lyrics from Leonard Cohens song First we take Manhattan, the paper explore what public values are created in a co-creation processes between actors within a public organization and a coordinating researcher representing a university. Data for the paper comes from a project for researching collaborative innovation in a municipality as well as experiences made by the author in three interlinked roles as researcher, project manager and finally as process manager for sustainable development projects involving the university and public partners.

Four types of public values have been identified through the associative structuring approach. They are relational values, knowledge values, change values, and symbolic public values. The tension between these co-created public values reveal that existing organizational hierarchical power structures are ever present. Public values that correspond to dominating official agendas of the collaborating organizations are quite noticeable in the empirical account. Proof of the success of a formal collaboration between the university and its partners, are valued and asked for. Coordination thus favours constructions of implicit symbolic public values, where mediated symbols of the structures, processes and results appear as preferred outcomes.

The study thus mainly reveals public values associated with what is good for the people, but not so much what is valued by the people. Complementary practical contributions that more directly could be valued by the people, when and where researchers and public professionals build relations and knowledge in order to enhance the public organizations ability to deliver public value, are given less attention.

As a complementary contribution to method, the article introduces and discuss the pros and cons of associative structuring, that has been used in order to evoke an autoethnographic account of the researcher’s experiences of the collaboration.