This PMM theme issue will examine how public services can contribute to value creation for citizens within public service ecosystems (PSEs), considering implications for public administration and management theory and/or practice.
To better understand how social, ecological and economic value for citizens could be fostered in the context of public services, researchers have for the past decade addressed how the systemic, relational and context-dependent nature of value creation is situated within PSEs. In short, value creation explores how public services can be understood as resources that enable citizens to create/co-create value in their lives, and the PSE framework, first, draws attention to the hindering and enabling dynamics and conditions of value creation, embedded in and between individual, organizational and institutional levels of PSEs. To illustrate this more clearly, in the context of public services, value creation for citizens takes place through politically governed organizations. These organizations operate at the intersection of individual needs and collective interests. As a result, administrative and political contexts inevitably influence how value is created, what is possible, and how these processes unfold. Public administration and management research and practice informed by the analytical framework of PSEs are therefore well placed to take seriously the systemic characteristics and inherent tensions that shape public service environments.
Second, the PSE framework can help public sector managers, practitioners and researchers overcome the dyadic, service-user and organization-centric focus of value creation. This calls for attention, for example, to the roles and the variety of actors such as service users, family members, politicians, managers, practitioners and professionals in local, regional and national (public, private and non-governmental organizations) contexts. When viewed through the PSE framework, importantly, human-centric value creation/destruction processes become more appreciative also of the importance of non-living elements such as built environment, facilities, technologies, equipment and means of transport.
Third, utilizing the PSE framework to understand value creation for citizens calls for a more nuanced understanding of value. The conceptualization and understanding of value needs to incorporate both value for the service user and societal/collective value for citizens/communities, as well as considering both individual and collective beneficiaries in a more nuanced and appreciative way.
We therefore seek contributions that interrogate both value creation and PSEs further and which consider their implications for public administration and management theory and/or practice. Submissions can be theoretical or empirical. For research articles, a variety of research perspectives and methods are welcomed. Research articles should contribute to theory, as well as practice and/or policy. In addition, 1000-word debate articles and 3500-word new development articles are also welcome to enrich the pragmatic debates.