Activating collective co-production mechanisms for public services: Influencing citizens to participate in complex governance (original) (raw)
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International Review of Administrative Sciences, 2015
Previous research has suggested that citizen co-production of public services is more likely when the actions involved are easy and can be carried out individually rather than in groups. This article explores whether this holds in local areas of England and Wales. It asks which people are most likely to engage in individual and collective co-production and how people can be influenced to extend their co-production efforts by participating in more collective activities. Data were collected in five areas, using citizen panels organized by local authorities. The findings demonstrate that individual and collective co-production have rather different characteristics and correlates and highlight the importance of distinguishing between them for policy purposes. In particular, collective co-production is likely to be high in relation to any given issue when citizens have a strong sense that people can make a difference (‘political self-efficacy’). ‘Nudges’ to encourage increased co-product...
2016
Previous research has suggested that citizen co-production of public services is more likely when actions involved are easy and can be carried out individually rather than in groups. This paper explores whether this holds in local areas of England and Wales. It asks which people are most likely to engage in individual and collective co-production and how people can be influenced to extend their co-production efforts by participating in more collective activities. Data was collected in five areas, using citizen panels organised by local authorities. The findings demonstrate that individual and collective coproduction have rather different characteristics and correlates and highlight the importance of distinguishing between them for policy purposes. In particular, collective co-production is likely to be high in relation to any given issue when citizens have a strong sense that people can make a difference (‘political self-efficacy’). ‘Nudges’ to encourage increased co-production had ...
Activating Citizens to Participate in Collective Co-Production of Public Services
Journal of Social Policy, 2014
User and community co-production of public services first became topical in the late 1970s, both in private and public sectors. Recent interest has been triggered by recognition that the outcomes for which public agencies strive rely on multiple stakeholders, particularly service users and the communities in which they live. Extra salience has been given to the potential of co-production due to fiscal pressures facing governments since 2008. However, there has been little quantitative empirical research on citizen co-production behaviours. The authors therefore undertook a large-sample survey in five European countries to fill this gap. This article examines an especially significant finding from this research – the major gulf between current levels of collective co-production and individual co-production. It explores the drivers of these large differences and examines what the social policy implications would be if, given the potential benefits, the government wishes to encourage g...
User and community co-production of public services: what influences citizens to co-produce?
Public Administration and the Modern State: Assessing Trends, and Impact (Palgrave Macmillan), 2014
Previous research has suggested that citizens are more likely to engage in co-production of public services and social outcomes with public agencies when the actions involved are relatively easy and can be carried out individually rather than in groups (Loeffler et al, 2008). Since much of the potential pay-off from co-production has been identified as coming from group-based activities, this is a potentially serious barrier. The research in this chapter has explored how individuals can be influenced to extend their co-production activities into collective action, participating in more complex governance activities.
Bringing the power of the citizen into local public services – An evidence review.
2014
This Briefing Note investigates the evidence on how citizens already contribute – and might in future contribute even more – to co-commissioning, co-designing, co-delivering and co-assessing those services and the outcomes which the public sector seeks to achieve. We use the term ‘co-production’ as a convenient shorthand for this range of related concepts, in line with the growing international literature. In preparing this research brief we have carried out a thorough search of the literature and contacted a range of academic and practitioner colleagues, nationally and internationally, who are represented in this literature in order to identify further research not yet published. In searching the literature, we broke the research issues up into a number of research questions: What is ‘co-production’? In which contexts do co-production approaches appear to have worked? How to achieve more commitment of local authorities to co-production? How to achieve direct involvement of communities in co-production? How to make ‘co-production’ approaches work?
This report sets out the findings of a major research study into the role of co-production between citizens and professionals in the delivery of public services in five EU states. It draws on data from a representative citizen survey in five European countries, including Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany and the United Kingdom in May 2008 and from expert focus groups undertaken in those countries in early 2008. It is intended to contribute to the debate on how public agencies can deliver public services which best meet the needs of service users, citizens and taxpayers and the challenges for improving the future quality of public services. 2 Increasingly, we are seeing greater involvement of citizens in service delivery.Some of these developments have been driven by advances in ICT, particularly the internet, but there are also instances where citizens have begun to share with professionals some of the key service delivery tasks. It has also become clearer to service professionals over recent years that effective public services require the active contributions of both parties. Consequently, more and more service providers in the private and public sectors are seeking to co-operate with service users in order to tailor services better to their needs and to cut costs. 3 As a result, the relationship between service users and service professionals has changed profoundly, making service users less dependent, while, at the same time, giving them more responsibility. This has raised new interest in issues of co-production, a concept that is closely related to the inherent character of services. In particular, the literature on co-production highlights that production and consumption of many services are inseparable, which implies that quality in services often occurs during service delivery, usually in the interaction between the customer and provider, rather than just at the end of the process. Therefore, the concept of co-production is a useful way of viewing the new role of citizens as active participants in service delivery. Various objectives are being pursued by means of co-production, including improving public service quality by bringing in the expertise of the service user, and often that of their families and communities as well, into providing more differentiated services and increased choice, and making public services more responsive to users. The definition of co-production used in this study is the “involvement of citizens in the delivery of public services to achieve outcomes, which depend at least partly on their own behaviour”. 4 Clearly, there is a wide range of citizen co-production roles in service delivery – from ‘hero’ to ‘zero’. Therefore, a citizen survey was undertaken to explore the level of this co-production between citizens and the public sector. However, to set this in context, the survey also explored the extent to which citizens sometimes become engaged in improving outcomes without any involvement with public sector agencies. In particular, the survey focussed on the following issues: o How big is the role which citizens play in delivering public services? o How does the involvement of citizens change their attitudes and expectations towards public services? o Is the role of citizens in public service delivery likely to be more important in the future than at present? What are the obstacles and drivers of co-production in the public domain? 5. The survey was conducted by telephone from April 16 to May 5, 2008, among a representative random sample of 4,951 adults (18 years of age or older), with about 1,000 interviews in including Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany and the United Kingdom. The countries were chosen in order to get a wide range of different administrative cultures. The results presented in this report are sweighted according to each country’s representation in the European Union. In all the cases where we compare results across sectors or countries, the differences highlighted are statistically significant. Furthermore, the study focused on three different sectors which reflect distinctly different types of government functions: o Community safety, as an example of coercive action on the part of the state o Local environment, as an example of the regulatory function of the state o Public health, as an example of the welfare improvement function of the state. 6. One key result of the survey is that, contrary to the assumptions made by focus group participants, there are significant levels of co-production by citizens in the five countries studied in all three sectors. Citizens are particularly active in taking steps to look after the local environment (index score 61), to a somewhat lesser degree in health improvement initiatives (index score 52) and considerably less active in prevention of crime (index score 45).
The modern public management practices strongly rely on citizens " involvement in co-producing public services during all the steps of the process including: service planning-service delivery-measuring service performance. As particularly regards service planning (or design), several studies have demonstrated the potential of using citizens " inputs to enhance services quality. On the other side a few scholars and practitioners have questioned the idea according to which citizens " suggestions necessarily lead to the optimization of the service level for the local community as a whole. In other terms, according to this view, citizens are not always right, since their views are often partial and affected by short-terminism. The purpose of this paper is to give a contribution to this stream of research by investigating local government administrators " and elected officials " view on this point and by assessing its impact on the actual level of co-production practices within local governments. To explore this issue this paper presents the results both of a qualitative research involving 5 Italian local governments and of a mail survey conducted among a sample of 204 Italian local governments. The findings underline the existence of several criticisms against citizens " involvement in service design and the link between these attitudes and the actual level of co-production within local governments. * Even if the authors have equally contributed to this research, paragraphs 1, 2, 3 and a can be attributed to Francesca Magno and paragraphs 5 and 6 can be attributed to Fabio Cassia.
User and community co-production of public services: Fad or fact, nuisance or necessity?
2008
This Research Briefing reports research in the area of co-production which is developmental. It sets out to explore the differing theoretical strands which contribute to current thinking on user and community co-production. It shows that some of these strands predict very different roles – and outcomes – from coproduction. In particular, theories of coproduction predict that it can deliver either individualised benefits from the design and operation of public services or more collective benefits which result from the external effects created by each co-producing user for other actual and potential users. However, the empirical evidence from our recent survey of citizens in five EU countries suggests that the practice of co-production is dominated by individualised co-production.