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Citation: Osborne, S. P., Radnor, Z. and Strokosch, K. (2016). Co-Production and the Co-
Creation of Value in Public Services: A suitable case for treatment?. Public Management
Review, 18(5), pp. 639-653. doi: 10.1080/14719037.2015.1111927
This is the accepted version of the paper.
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Permanent repository link: https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/20623/
Link to published version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2015.1111927
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Co-production and the co-creation of value in public
services: a suitable case for treatment?
Stephen P Osborne, Centre for Service Excellence, University of Edinburgh
Business School, Scotland, Zoe Radnor, Centre for Service Management,
University of Loughborough, England, & Kirsty Strokosch, Centre for Service
Excellence, University of Edinburgh Business School, Scotland.
Email for contact: stephen.osborne@ed.ac.uk
Abstract
Co-production is currently one of cornerstones of public policy reform across the
globe. Inter alia, it is articulated as a valuable route to public service reform and to
the planning and delivery of effective public services, a response to the democratic
deficit and a route to active citizenship and active communities, and as a means by
which to lever in additional resources to public services delivery. Despite these
varied roles, co-production is actually poorly formulated and has become one of a
series of ‘woolly-words’ in public policy. This paper presents a conceptualisation of
co-production that is theoretically rooted in both public management and service
management theory. It argues that this is a robust starting point for the evolution of
new research and knowledge about co-production and for the development of
evidence based public policy making and implementation.
Key words
Co-production, public services reform, active citizens, active communities, public
service-dominant logic, co-creation, public value
Draft. Not for citation or publication but comments very welcome to the authors.
Co-production and the co-creation of value in public
services: a suitable case for treatment?
Co-production is currently one of cornerstones of public policy reform across the
globe (Horne & Shirley 2009, Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services
2011, OECD 2011). Inter alia, it is articulated as a valuable route to public service
reform (Boyle & Harris 2009, Nambisan & Nambisan 2013) and to the planning and
delivery of effective public services (Durose et al 2013), a response to the
democratic deficit (Pestoff 2006) and a route to active citizenship (DoH 2010) and
active communities (Scottish Community Development Centre 2011), and as a
means by which to lever in additional resources to public services delivery
(Birmingham City Council 2014). A significant body of research has also begun to
mature (inter alia Cepiku & Giordano 2014, Fledderus et al 2014, Radnor et al 2014,
van Eijk & Steen 2014, Hardyman et al 2015, Isett & Miranda 2015, Wiewiora et al
2015), Despite these varied roles and growing body of empirical research, co-
production continues to be poorly formulated and has become one of a series of
‘woolly-words’ in public policy. This paper presents a conceptualisation of co-
production that is theoretically rooted in both public management and service
management theory. It argues that this is a robust starting point for the evolution of
new research and knowledge about co-production and for the development of
evidence based public policy making and implementation. At the centre of this
conceptualisation is the relationship between co-production and the co-creation of
value through public services delivery. This relationship is explored further below.
In this paper we define co-production as the voluntary or involuntary involvement of
public service users in any of the design, management, delivery and/or evaluation of
public services
1
. As Osborne & Strokosch (2013) have identified, there are two, often
unconnected, strands of work on such co-production – from public administration
and management (PAM) theory and from service management theory. From a PAM
perspective, this literature originated from the seminal work of Ostrom (1972, see
also Alford 2014 for a re-evaluation of this work) in the US. She contended that
1
We acknowledge that there is a further discourse about the broader involvement of citizens and not
just direct service users in the co-production of public services. However this is not the focus of this
discussion here.
public service organisations (PSOs) depended as much upon the community for
policy implementation and service delivery as the community depended upon them.
This was the genesis of the concept of co-production in public administration. The
public administration co-production literature subsequently developed predominantly
in the United States, Europe and Australia (for example, Sharp, 1980; Whitaker,
1980; Parks et al, 1981; Levine and Fisher, 1984; Rosentraub & Warren 1987;
Brudney and England, 1983; Frederickson 1996, Alford 1998, 2002, Evers 2006,
Brandsen and Pestoff 2006, Bovaird 2007, Verscheure et al 2012, Pestoff et al 2012,
Osborne & Strokosch 2013, Radnor et al 2014, Pestoff 2014).
It is possible to trace an evolution in this PAM literature, from the focus of
’traditional’ public administration with co-production as a way through which public
services could be delivered with ‘the maximum feasible participation of residents of
the areas and members of the groups served’. (Judd, 1979, p. 303, see also LaPorte
1971), through an association with ‘consumerism’ as part of the New Public
Management reform trajectory (Potter 1994, Barnes 1995, Powell et al 2010) and
latterly as part of open systems approaches to public services delivery as
exemplified by the model of the New Public Governance (Osborne 2010). It is no
longer the case, for example, of exploring the top-down relationship between public
policy, PSOs and the recipients of public services. Emerging new technology has
offered service users potential routes to wrest (some) bottom-up control over public
services from the policy, administrative and managerial structures (Dunleavy et al
2006, Bekkers et al 2011, Voorberg et al 2014).
Whilst the co-production concept has developed within the on-going discourse of
PAM, however, it has failed to challenge the traditional orthodoxy of this discourse
where “public officials are exclusively charged with responsibility for designing and
providing services to citizens, who in turn only demand, consume and evaluate
them” (Pestoff 2006, p. 506; our emphasis). Within PAM theory, co-production is
largely preoccupied with how service user participation can be ‘added into’ the
process of service planning and production to improve the quality of these services
2
.
Co-production thus does not challenge the basic premises of this theory about public
2
Though both Ostrom and Alford have acknowledged that co-production can at times be involuntary
in nature.
services delivery, because it can only occur at the behest of, and controlled by,
service professionals (Brandsen & Pestoff 2006).
From a service management perspective, however, the nature and role of co-
production in (public) service delivery is somewhat different. Crucially, this literature
is not concerned with how to ‘enable’ or ‘build in’ co-production to the service
delivery process. Its basic premise is that co-production is an essential and
inalienable core component of service delivery: you cannot have (public) service
delivery without co-production. Service users do not choose to co-produce or
otherwise – it occurs whether they choose to or not, whether they are aware of it or
not, and whether the public service encounter is coerced or not. Indeed resistance to
service delivery, especially in the more coercive areas of public services such as the
criminal justice system or mental health, is as much a form of co-production as a
voluntary and conscious willingness to co-produce. Co-production thus comprises
the intrinsic process of interaction between any service organization and the service
user at the point of delivery of a service - what Normann (1991) has termed ‘the
moment of truth’ in service provision.
Briefly, traditional service management theory stems from tripartite notions of
intangibility, inseparability, and co-production (Gronroos 2007): services comprise
intangible processes not concrete products (even if they may utilize such concrete
elements in their delivery); the production and consumption of such services are not
separate processes but rather are inseparable and occur contemporaneously (you
cannot ‘store’ a service for delivery at a later date – it is consumed at the point of its
production; and the user/consumer is a (willing or unwilling, conscious or
unconscious) participant in service production and enactment. Most significant in the
context of this paper is the latter point about the centrality of co-production to service
delivery. The quality and performance of a service process is shaped primarily by the
expectations of the user, their active or passive role in the service delivery, and their
subsequent experience of the process. This is at the heart of co-production. Service
organisations can only ‘promise’ a certain process or experience – the actuality is
dependent upon the aforementioned ‘moment of truth’, where service user
expectations of a service collide with their experience of it – and which determines
