Capabilities of welfare policies are put to test with aging populations and a growing demand for welfare services with a decreasing supply of resources. These kinds of challenges cannot be fixed with piecemeal fixes but instead system-wide transformation that require collaboration across policy realms, sectors and disciplines is called for. Despite the increased scholarly interest on innovation ecosystems and engaged universities there is still rather little discussion on their societal value in the contexts of welfare policies. Hence, we need to increase our understanding on both the mechanisms accelerating interdisciplinary knowledge creation and turning interdisciplinary knowledge into societal value.

This research scrutinises the case of Finland where a Health and Social Services Reform is underway to make the Finnish welfare system more efficient. The case under investigation builds on data gathered from the Wellbeing service country of Pirkanmaa which is the largest new welfare area in Finland. Our special interest is on one of the initiatives put in place in the area in promotion of multidisciplinary and cross-sectoral social and healthcare cooperation. Local universities are recognised as a key to the processes of social change and development. The aim was to understand how interdisciplinary research should be supported and what measures should the university take to support such initiatives.

In the article, we consider how the university supports multidisciplinary research and cross-sectoral collaboration suggesting a significant role for the university in the welfare system. Research shows that researchers consider the supportive structures of collaboration across disciplines and sectors essential. The open and inclusive nature of these structures is found crucial while more centralized and rigid structures are found to narrow down collaboration. Structures supportive to collaboration should allow agile and flexible activities so that even rapid change and experimentation are possible. The key elements of collaboration are trust, dialogue, and low-threshold cooperation. Successful collaboration builds on regular encounters and working together.

To conclude, we argue that the concepts of an innovation ecosystem and engaged university hold a promise when trying to both understand and create better policy and practise in welfare systems and contemplate universities roles in creating societal value. While system-wide transformations take time, this research finds that removing structural institutional and organisational barriers are the key. Universities need to take leading role as regional change agents and to both support research and dissemination of research results in collaborative learning processes.

The measurement of public value in the welfare sector is no longer an option: rather, it is becoming a crucial source of accountability to ensure stakeholders’ and communities’ support and involvement to public service organizations. Such pressure for accountability is even stronger when public-private hybrid organizations (HOs) are involved, namely organizations combining public and private sector features (Karré, 2022). This is always more frequent in public welfare service delivery after the massive wave of corporatization of public service organizations (Christiansen and Lægreid, 2003) inspired by New Public Management policies (Hood, 1991) and crisis of modern welfare states.

Building on these premises, the purpose of this study is to investigate how to measure public value (Moore, 1995) generated by a hybrid organization delivering welfare services. More precisely, our aim is twofold: first, to disentangle the different dimensions of public value that characterize an HO operating in the welfare domain and second, to identify appropriate measure to assess those dimensions and, consequently, the public value generated for a given community. To do so, we provide a single, in depth case study (Yin, 1994) of a public-private hybrid organization (ASC) providing welfare services for seven Municipalities in Lombardy region (Italy), serving over 200.000 inhabitants. ASC went through political turbulence in 2019, when its public shareholders questioned its convenience with respect to other delivery schemes, requiring innovative ways to represent the value generated for its community.

Our data collection is based on archival data (including balance sheets and social budgets); 11 semi-structured interviews with 19 relevant stakeholders from the served community (public shareholders, 3rd sector partners) and focus groups and interviews with the HO top management. From the data analysis, seven dimensions of public value emerged as shared between ASC and its stakeholders and shareholders, capturing the multi-dimensional nature of the HO contribution in the field. Successively, we provide quantitative and qualitative measures to operationalize those seven dimensions and illustrate the public value generated by ASC in its territory.

Our contribution is twofold: on the one hand, we contribute to the stream of literature devoted to the evaluation and measurement of welfare outcomes interconnected with public and societal values. On the other, we contribute to the studies on hybrid organizations, which called for research on how to improve performance management systems to account for both their economic and social welfare mission.

Public service logic (PSL) has recently attracted attention as a lens on value co-creation in public service ecosystems (Osborne et al. 2018, 2022). Public service logic places the service user at the centre of complex value-creating service processes by recognising that service producers, as such, do not create value for customers, instead producing a service offering with the potential to create value for service users (Grönroos & Voima 2013; Rossi & Tuurnas 2021).

The service-user role is distinctive in the public services context: Citizens are not merely service users, but simultaneously actors, and collectively, public service owners. Value co-creation is a collaborative process requiring active participation from the public service organisation, service operators, service users and other stakeholders. In public services, value-creation within the co-creation process also affects these stakeholders and can have a societal impact (Osborne et al. 2020, 2022).

The ongoing discussion concerning PSL is lively but relatively new, and can be criticised for not taking into account the role of professionals working in public-sector organisations as the focal actors in value co-creation (Kinder & Stenvall 2023). This criticism creates a need to examine how these professionals contribute to developing and implementing public policies and services, particularly in the context of street-level bureaucracy (Lipsky 1980; Hupe 2022). Street-level bureaucrats, such as social workers and healthcare professionals, have significant discretion in interpreting and applying policies as they engage with the public. As a result, their actions and decisions have a direct and profound impact on the lives of citizens. These individuals are responsible for translating abstract policies into tangible services and outcomes, collaborating with citizens to address their needs and demands.

The everyday interactions of street-level bureaucrats shape the quality, effectiveness, and legitimacy of public services. We see professionals as one of the most important actor groups in the service system. Therefore, we argue that observing their role as possible co-creators of value can offer valuable insights into operationalising the idea of PSL in public organisations. In addition, those same professionals can have significant power and influence over how the “silent voices” of service users are heard and their needs considered in public service processes.

This study aims to bring much-needed insight into the role of professionals in PSL by asking: How can the role of professionals be operationalised in the PSL discussion? A review on public-sector value co-creation, which is at the heart of PSL, can give valuable insights into the theme (see Steen & Tuurnas 2016). Therefore, this study also investigates how co-creation theorems interpret the roles of professionals working at the interface with citizens. The analytical question guiding the research process is: How is the role of professionals presented and interpreted in value co-creation processes?

Methodologically this study is a scoping review in that it synthesises the existing literature to complement the existing understanding of the role of professionals in PSL and public-sector co-creation. The study provides new insights on the topic and enriches the PSL discussion. In addition, this study serves as a stepping stone for future empirical research on the role of professionals in PSL and co-creation.

References:

Grönroos, C., & Voima, P. (2013). Critical service logic: making sense of value creation and co-creation. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 41, 133-150.

Hupe, P. (2022). The Politics of the Public Encounter. What Happens When Citizens Meet the State. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Kinder, T., & Stenvall, J. (2023). A critique of public service logic. Public Management Review, 1-23.

Lipsky, M. (1980). Street-level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Osborne, S. P. (2018). From public service-dominant logic to public service logic: are public service organisations capable of co-production and value co-creation? Public Management Review, 20(2), 225‒231.

Osborne, S. P., Nasi, G., & Powell, M. (2020). Beyond co‐production: Value creation and public services. Public Administration, 99(4), 641‒657.

Osborne, S. P., Powell, M., Cui, T., & Strokosch, K. (2022). Value creation in the public service ecosystem: An integrative framework. Public Administration Review, 82(4), 634‒645

Rossi, P. & Tuurnas, S. (2021). Conflicts fostering understanding of value co-creation and service systems transformation in complex public service systems. Public Management Review, 23(2), 254‒275, DOI: 10.1080/14719037.2019.1679231

Steen, T., & Tuurnas, S. (2018). The roles of the professional in co-production and co-creation processes. In Co-production and co-creation (80-92). Routledge.

The accumulation of different social developments - migration and immigration, feminisation of the labour market, changes in family structures, social ageing, social consequences of ecological policies, etc. - has posed a growing challenge to the classical welfare state since the 1990s. Against this background, an academic but also political debate has since developed around the paradigm of social investment (SI) as a new guiding idea for welfare state policy and action. The central idea is that the social investment state should support people in different life situations and phases in a proactive-activating way, and no longer predominantly through redistributive instruments. In fact, the concept of social investment stands for the idea that alongside the classical transfer function of the Keynesian-Beveridgean welfare state ("buffer"), the function of actively supporting and strengthening the individual in his economic independence as a (potential) worker or employee ("flow") and in his social stability as a socially differently integrated person (parents/family; caring relative; poor person; migrant, etc.) ("stock") moves in (cf. Hemerijck, 2018). In this logic, social services become the primary instrument of future-oriented welfare state policy and action. The multiple crisis experiences of the recent past (euro and financial crisis, challenge of migration, COVID 19, consequences of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine) additionally underline the orientation towards the idea of social investment, as this aims at sustainably strengthening resilience - of individuals, the welfare state and society as a whole.

Notwithstanding the broad criticism of the theoretical model of SI and the SI-state, which has been called out as, in essence, the continuation of the neo-liberal further development of the classical welfare state, quite little is, however, known and little empirical research exists on whether and to what extent this model is suitable for practice. This is where the paper comes in. It is interested in the preconditions for a change from the classical welfare state to the social investment state. Using the example of social support policies for the long-term unemployed in the two classically conservative welfare states of Germany and France - which were long considered particularly resistant to reform - it asks in a comparative perspective whether and to what extent an orientation towards the paradigm of social investment has taken place against the background of the societal changes and crises described above.

The paper considers the policy implementation phase of public policy-making as a central phase for understanding the practical applicability of the SI paradigm to state action. Accordingly, it takes the resources and capacities of the actors involved in the implementation of the basic social protection policy against long-term unemployment as an indicator of the ability of the welfare state to change towards the new paradigm. The change in capacity endowment, i.e. material and human resources, but also knowledge resources, analytical skills as well as capacities for action and governance, is analysed over the period of the past two decades by means of qualitative methods. Special attention is paid to recent developments, i.e. social service and support policies against long-term unemployment under the auspices of the COVID 19 crisis. It is shown that a sustainable change towards the SI-state in terms of the practical implementation of the paradigm is still far away. The analysis also shows that social change, torpedoed by crises, is an important but not sufficient driver of welfare state change. On the other hand, institutionalised styles of governance and public policy-making prove to be strong structural brakes on adaptability - even in and independent of the political crisis mode.