Abstract
Co-production in the public sector can contribute to enhancing sustainability, social equity and democracy in society. Nevertheless, the citizens in greatest need of enhanced social equity and increased democratic participation are often considered less capable of taking part in co-production projects. Embedded in an understanding of co-production-as-practice, this chapter shifts the attention from focusing on the abilities of the individual to focusing on the social processes of becoming. This processual understanding provides possibilities for coming to grips with how highly marginalised citizens both influence and are influenced by the ability of public staff to realise better solutions within public services. The chapter contributes to widening the processual understandings of co-production by seeing resources, capabilities and empowerment as dynamic elements emerging in the present through social processes. Consequently, it illustrates how social equity and inclusiveness can be produced through the co-constitutive processes of becoming.
TopIntroduction
The public sector is facing challenges in securing future public services for citizens as the population ages and public resources shrink. This situation has led to a greater demand for alternative ways of providing public services through involving citizens in both the development and production of services and societal development. Co-creation and co-production with citizens are central concepts in the re-orientation from New Public Management (NPM) over to New Public Governance (NPG). The motivation for the public sector to foster co-creation and co-production is that it is expected to lead to greater efficiency and better-tailored services (Vanleene et al., 2018). Participation in co-creation processes can also lead to empowerment, for both public employees as well as other relevant actors involved in the processes (Torfing, 2016). Additionally, co-creation and co-production are increasingly highlighted as tools for both solving societal challenges and influencing societal development (McMillan et al., 2014), as well as securing citizenship and democracy by involving citizens in societal development processes (Vanleene et al., 2018). Co-creation and co-production are also expected to have a direct positive impact on the participants involved in the co-creating and co-producing processes. Co-production is broadly understood as a process where volunteers (here also called citizens), in collaboration with professional staff, produce services within the frame of an organisation (Vanleene et al., 2018) and between organisations (Torfing, 2016). Depending on to what extent the process also involves volunteers in the planning and developing of the services, it can also entail co-creation. Given the positive impact co-creation and co-production can have on both the development of public services and the empowerment of participants, co-creation and co-production should be especially important in marginalised situations. This chapter addresses how staff are able to realise good solutions under marginalised conditions, and how marginalised citizens contribute to enabling staff, despite their seeming lack of resources and capabilities. However, in order to identify these relational processes, a shift in ontology might be necessary.
Co-creation and co-production are inherently processual. The research on co-creation and co-production has dominantly aimed to describe the processes, drivers and barriers, methods, necessary input factors and the outputs the processes produce. Hence, the dominant research on co-creation and co-production is embedded in an ontology of being, which sees entities as stable and independent. However, an ontology of being as a linear process ontology (Cloutier & Langley, 2020) fails to provide insight into how the processes and participants can be understood as co-constituting one another through such processes. Thus, although many studies on co-creation and co-production emphasise the positive impact it can have on both participants and public services, the ontology in which the studies are embedded can also obscure the exploration of how these dynamics evolve.
The aim of this conceptual chapter is to suggest and demonstrate how two different ontologies can offer different understandings of co-creation and co-production. Further, it intends to explore how a process ontology of becoming (Buchan & Simpson, 2020; Rylander Ekblad & Simpson, 2020) can enable us to understand co-creation and co-production as part of everyday practice – where possibilities and constraints concerning what it is possible to do dynamically evolve through social interactions – and contribute to understanding the dynamic and social aspects of resources, capabilities and empowerment.
The question addressed here is as follows:
How can a performative process ontology provide an alternative understanding of co-creation and co-production in the public sector as a form of practice, where resources, capabilities and empowerment are co-constituting elements developing through transactions? In order to provide insight into how the two contrasting ontologies supply two different ways of understanding co-creation and co-production, an empirical example has been chosen for demonstrating how the same project can be interpreted differently from the two ontologies. The innovation case used as an example might not be understood as a real co-creation and co-production case from the linear process ontology. However, from a performative process perspective, it looks quite different.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Co-Production: Collaborative realisation of new solutions.
Transactionality: Actions simultaneously within and between actors.
Co-Creation: Collaborative development of new solutions.
Staff: In this chapter a shared term for social workers, nurses and other employees involved in the nutrition project.
Old Drug Users: Drug users over 40 years old. These are seen as beyond re-habilitation. In this chapter, they are often referred to as “the habitants.”
Ontology of Becoming: An ontology seeing the evolving process of meaning as the core of interest, rather than focusing on the entities.
Temporality: An understanding of reality as realised and defined in the present, whereas the past and the future are under continuous interpretation.