Co-Production as a Research Method

The co-production turn has affected academic work, encouraging researchers not only to study co-production in public organizations but also to pursue collaborative research practices with practitioners. The purpose of this chapter is to present a reflexive account of co-production as a research practice. The point of departure is a one-day collaborative writing workshop that embraced several aspects of ‘co-'. The workshop brought together two research projects, one on social innovation in elderly care and one on collaborative writing. Having been involved in both projects, the author reflects on issues of the writing project that caused great debate during the workshop and highlight dimensions of power, quality, and impact that arise in co-produced research. The chapter shows that the co-production turn calls into question traditional power hierarchies between theory-practice, analysis-experience, and researcher-researched. While co-production seeks to even out power hierarchies, it also generates new problems, new tensions, and new questions.

Aesthetic Dimensions of Music-Initiated Processes in Co-Production

This chapter offers an aesthetic approach to co-production processes at a micro level to understand how citizens, social care professionals, and researchers contribute to developing music- and empowerment-based tools for citizen involvement in social-psychiatric care. The chapter draws on empirical material from a research-circle-based project about dream workshops within a Danish municipal social-psychiatric care unit. The chapter addresses music as supporting empowerment within the processes of co-production of citizens' action plans, and music is understood as an aesthetic dimension of these processes. The chapter includes a pragmatic research perspective on knowledge and experience building and generation of empirical insights, drawing on Dewey and Bruner, realized in the research circle method.

Co-Production as Seen From a Top Management Perspective

This chapter addresses the ‘co-production turn' in public sector organisations from a top management perspective. The co-production turn is seen as a historical development from new public management to the concept of new public governance. Ideas on collaborative governance have been advanced as an answer to some of the challenges of the public sector in health services, caregiving, and social work. Current issues in welfare production in public sector organisations are seen as a result of the economic rationalisation ideas in new public management, and co-production has been theoretically advanced as a new way to involve citizens in the co-production of welfare. The co-production turn is explored as an emerging research field in this book, and in the current chapter, the authors explore how three top managers make sense of this concept when developing and implementing new strategies in their public organisations.

Implementation of Co-Production Through Sensemaking

Co-production is increasingly outlined as an approach for operationalizing the shift from new Public Management to New Public Governance. In particular, the literature discusses the implications of co-production on frontline staff and the change in relations to citizens. This chapter focuses on a less developed area, namely the implications of the co-production turn on management. Specifically, the authors focus on how Karl Weick's notion of sensemaking when operationalized into sensemaking-tools is helpful in facilitating an organizational change towards co-production. The application of sensemaking as a processual approach to co-production leads to a discussion of how management in public organizations seems to be evolving into what can be termed hybrid management.

Creating Opportunity Spaces for Co-Production

This chapter builds a conceptual model for how inter-organizational relationships can be built to enable the creation of learning across administrative and organizational boundaries. The conceptual model is discussed in relation to the body of knowledge concerning co-production and the new roles required of organizational members and frontline staff when services cut across these boundaries. The argument is that it is becoming increasingly important for professional co-producers and their organizations to identify, analyze, and improve the opportunity space for co-production when this opportunity space unfolds beyond one organization.

Exploring Collective Leadership and Co-Production

This chapter explores coproduction through a collective leadership lens. It draws from the public administration and leadership fields and a 2019 empirical study of public service collaboration in Scotland, UK. It is suggested that tensions generated by working within a new public management model combined with frustrations felt from current collaborative practice have motivated an exploration into alternative conceptions of leadership and different ways of working when collaborating. The findings reveal that collaboration can be strengthened through the application of four key processual and attitudinal modifications. This approach is described as working in an emergent and relational way while applying a systems and inquiry mindset. It is the effect of the sum of these parts that boosts the intensity of collaborative work, offering a number of benefits, including an enriched and dynamic coproduction process embedded within its practice.

Co-Creation of Public Values

Well-being is of vital importance for individuals as well as society at large. UNs Sustainability Goal #17, ‘Partnership for the Goals', support co-creation and co-production as necessary approaches to reach public values such as citizenship, social justice, and well-being. However, co-creation and co-production is not enough. It is necessary to address who participates in co-creation, how they participate, and how participation affects outcomes. Inclusive participation in everyday life, public services, and democracy is crucial to achieve active citizenship and well-being for all. This chapter will discuss how voices of citizens in marginalized and vulnerable life situations needs to be included and recognized in democracy and public sector practices as well as in decision-making processes. The chapter suggests how public sector organisations can promote active citizenship, valued social roles, and well-being through participation in co-creation of public values, placing well-being for all and social justice at the forefront of public value co-creation.

Organizing Learning Processes of Co-Production

This chapter addresses questions about possible theoretical and philosophical perspectives implied in the processual approach to co-production presented in this book. The chapter presents experiential learning perspectives on this matter, and also introduces action research as one research area that seems relevant for co-production as a processual phenomenon. This learning and action-based theoretical perspective is, however, not only an abstraction; it is also very closely related to practice in that its core interest is processes in relations between human beings. The chapter concludes with a brief presentation of reflection as an inseparable part of co-creation processes and points to theoretical and philosophical implications of this.

Co-Production and Educational Change

For programs promoting responsive practices in education, and in particular learning through play, equating ‘scalable' with ‘formulaic, easily replicable trainings' carries the risk of achieving superficial shifts in participants' attitudes and practices, rather than sustained change. Part of the reason is the fundamental mismatch between the practices in focus (i.e., responsive practices) and the training approach itself (i.e., prescriptive). As an alternative, this chapter explores the merits of co-production for meaningfully and sustainably equipping educators at scale. From a microlevel view of co-productive processes in education settings, the authors illustrate two distinct potentials, which combine to form a flexible program strategy: first, co-production as a sense-making process to contextualize programs, and secondly, co-production as a catalyst for capacity building. The chapter concludes with future research needed to better understand flexible program strategies based on co-production, and the change journeys of educator learners participating in such programs.

Re-Shaping Physical and Digital Consumer and Participative Co-Production Processes

Social distancing has been a key strategy in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The practice of social distancing has reshaped co-production processes, which have typically been built on close interactions between people, often in physical encounters. In this chapter, an action research design is applied, describing four everyday examples from Sweden of how individuals and organizations handled the changes, and applying a theory of four interaction zones. The aim is to explore how the practice of social distancing has implications for consumer and participative co-production processes. The physical space in co-production is negotiated and alterations are made: cancellations, decreased interactions, increased physical distance, outdoor activities, and moving interaction online. The cases illustrate that human space is also negotiated in online interactions. Online co-production initiatives need to address the challenges of attendance, digital literacy, meeting designs, and sharing power in meetings. The future requires a broader mix of co-production activities.