LIST OF DEFINITIONS
CHAPTER 3: CONCEPTUAL OVERVIEW
The conceptual origins of co-production was first used in the 1970s by Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues at Indiana University in the USA. They did so in order to acknowledge the contribution that local communities made to the successful delivery of services, in this case policing. The conceptual origins of co-production can be traced back to this time period (Ostrom, 1996). Ostrom believed that active participation from the general public resulted in the highest level of effectiveness for public services. Subsequent research has made an effort to develop a more complex understanding of the concept of co-production by employing a wide range of various typologies and building an evidence base through empirical investigation. This has led to a number of different authors providing a wide range of definitions, including a variety of different typologies to identify the actors involved (for example, professionals, citizens, consumers, service users, community members, and organizations). Some definitions specify what the process entails in relation to the activities, the type of contribution (resources, voluntary, paid, assets), relationship or relational requirements (active involvement, reciprocal, equal, power sharing), and intended output or area of output. Other definitions focus on what the process entails in relation to the activities (production of public services, efficiency, and value creation). The fundamental principle underpinning the conceptual overview is that co- production can be an effective factor of happiness and well-being to promote the effectiveness and efficiency of public sector.
Co-production emerged as a method in the public service reform suggesting that the key to reforming public services is to encourage users to design and deliver services in equal partnership between citizens and government. Moreover, there is a principle used to describe co-production approaches is that of working ‘with’ people, rather than doing ‘for’, is about
recognizing that citizens can play an active role in creating and maintaining their own life wellbeing. . Some people have the perception that co-production is the natural state of affairs, but that it has been undermined by increased professionalization and a culture of dependency.
Therefore, the principle of working "with" rather than doing "for" relates to a broader and cultural change in the relationship between professionals and citizens. This change will result in professionals becoming catalysts, enablers, and facilitators rather than simply service providers.
Public sector reform has discussed widely in the literature as worldwide phenomena.
Worldwide, governments seek to attain high levels of economic success, happiness, and well- being while also being environmentally friendly. The reform can be viewed by the main models of public administration namely: old public administration (PA), new public management (NPM), and new governance model.
The traditional public administration (PA) is grounded on hierarchy, bureaucracy, control, and well-defined rules. In this model, the line of control is straight, which means that politicians work as controllers and are responsible for making choices, while public servants merely implement political mandates. Hartley (2005) concerns the population in this model as ‘fairly homogenous’. Alfred (2009) further described the participants (clients) in this model as passive while the public organizations are the active participants in the relationship.
The New Public Management (NPM) is the reformed model of the old public administration.
According to Ferlie and Andresani (2006), new public management model promotes the idea that the government should function more like a company and should be managed as such. NPM model focuses on performance and contracting in and out of services, while viewing the population as consumers of public services rather than as clients (Hood, 1995). In this model,
the politicians’ role is mainly study where public servants move from being purely professional bureaucrats to becoming professional managers. As this model is customer-centered, consumers are able to exercise choice and exit from any particular provider if their needs are not fully satisfied. Thus, the public servants are supposed to find the most suitable arrangements for public service delivery through open competitions between public organizations (contracting in), and public, private and non-profit organizations (contracting out).
Hughes (2003) labeled the third model as New Public Governance Model (NPG) which emphasizes the relationships between the population, public servants, and other actors. The organizational landscape of this model is characterized by networks, inter-organizational relationships and multifactor policymaking. Bovaird (2012) described the public servants’ role as directors and mediators where they primarily adopt holistic strategic thinking and a strategic shaping approach in making things happen. The citizen then acts as co-producer endowed with knowledge, resources, assets, and capabilities towards creation of more public value.
The New Public Governance (NPG) paradigm is essentially collaborative and is projected outside the hierarchical structure of individual public organizations in order to join a complex network of inter-institutional and inter-organizational relationships. Within this network, various actors are connected vertically and horizontally to co-produce public services. This paradigm shift is intended to bring about a new form of public service delivery (Alford&
Hughes, 2008). In addition, Osborne (2006) suggests that the failure of PA can be attributed to its historically statist and bureaucratic structure. In addition to this, he stated that NPM was merely a transitional stage that took place between regular PA and NPG. NPG is the result of the interaction of a number of individuals, each of whom possesses unique interests, values, cognitive orientations, and power resources (Osborne, 2010). According to Pestoff (2011) co-
production, communities, organizational sociology, and network theory all play a significant role in NPG's development.
The shift toward a more positive approach to psychology has resulted in a greater emphasis placed on the positive aspects of existence, which in turn has had an effect on the ideas of happiness and well-being. (Money, Hillenbrand & Da Camara, 2008). Why do people need to be happy? How can organizations make its customers and service users happy? These questions have driven researchers to further investigate the effective factors of happiness and well-being.
Brulde (2007) asserts that the quality of people’s life has something to do with their current state of happiness. Accordingly, happiness is an attitude of people, their satisfaction, and a positive evaluation of how well they like their life that they live; that when an individual's expectations are met, happiness becomes evident.
The report of happiness (2015) showed that there is a use of happiness data and happiness research from governments worldwide to enable people to live better. The government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) recognized that their success will be evaluated based on their effort to improve citizens’ happiness and well-being. The government embodied happiness and well-being in the national agenda “… to be the happiest of all nations.” They believe that to improve the happiness and well-being there is a need to enable and encourage citizen participation through the policies, regulations and systems to be a part of public service delivery.
In February 2016, the government of the UAE announced a new ministry called the Ministry of Happiness. The new ministry has an objective to enhance the managerial practices and policies to promote happiness in the UAE. This makes the UAE one of the nations worldwide with a ministry that takes the cause of happiness as a primary goal for public policy (Helliwell, Layard,
& Sachs, 2016).
Early literature found that there is a direct relationship between happiness and some factors like income, healthcare, education, housing, and unemployment (Florida, Mellander & Rentfrow 2013). However, limited studies have studied the relationship between happiness and co- production in public sector. Bovaird (2012) discussed that public service delivery is a collaborative process between service providers and service users. Co-production is one approach to achieving service innovation (Chen, Tsou, & Ching, 2011). This thesis proposes co-production as a factor that would enhance happiness and well-being with a considerable impact of innovative ideas that can be generated by co-production. Innovation is considered as the foundation considered for economic growth, thus it becomes an integral factor in planning for various public incentives in order for the private actors to continue to produce new products or processes. The literature shows that there is a relationship between happiness and innovation.
According to Woiceshyn and Eriksson (2014) happiness and innovation are two important aspects that play an important role in society both for policy-makers and the societal actors.
In conclusion, this chapter presents an overview about the conceptual overview of co-production and how it can be an effective factor on happiness and well-being within communities which is finally will reflect on the performance of public organizations.